The Whole Motion: Collected Poems, 1945-1992 (Wesleyan Poetry)

For over three decades, James Dickey has been one of the nation's most important poets and a prominent man of letters. The Whole Motion collects his poetic oeuvre into a single volume: 235 poems from his first book, Into the Stone (1960), to The Eagle's Mile (1990), along with previously uncollected poems and unpublished "apprentice" works.

This is the definitive James Dickey collection. Wallace Stegner wrote that Dickey's poems leave the reader with "an awed sense of the pure power of these words." Better known as the novelist who wrote Deliverance, Dickey was one of the most important poets of the century. "The Lifeguard" is one of his best poems and is typical of his writing in its blending of the physical and spiritual worlds, in its memorable images, and in its marriage of sound to sense. This is one to read again and again, to be newly astonished.