Into the Stone and Other Poems

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Ashley James Into the Stone and Other Poems “What I have always striven for is to find some way to incarnate my best moments-those which in memory are most persistent and obsessive. I find that most of these moments have an element of danger, an element of repose, and an element of joy.” (James Dickey) Into the Stone and Other Poems, by James Dickey is a book of poems about post war, somewhat dark self-discovery. In the poems Dickey express war-time, death, pain, despair, and very emotional feelings/energies. Dickey seems to have difficulty with possibly letting go of nightmares of his war days. Or perhaps it was that he felt like exaggerating his war time in his poetry. Perhaps he wasn’t quite the hero or got as dirty as he had hoped and so he channeled that fantasy in his work. There are many symbols throughout the theme of this collection, but let’s focus mostly on his choice of grotesque reenactments of his time at war and after. Bits and pieces of his work detailing the very parts of the body that have been ripped from its origin. No doubt Dickey was grieving and perhaps grueling over the unsightly scenes he partook in, and he expresses them fully in this book. I feel that the use of so much supernatural jargon only exacerbates the very idea that he is extremely detached. Detached from reality? Perhaps, but definitely detached from the truth. One critic, Robert Hill, agrees with this theory and supports it with pointing out how Dickey uses energies into people and ghostly presences to create his ambiance and mood. Even Baughman reveals how in one of Dickey’s poems The Performance, the imagery may also imply the speaker’s sense that Armstrong, a bona fide hero, has died better than the speaker might have, that asserts, is a common feeling in combat survivors, a feeling that induces guilt and a very real ambivalence about the self. (Baughman) And hence

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