Quotessence
Home / Authors / James Dickey
James Dickey

James Dickey Quotes

Poet

Filter quotes by topic

AllFeelsIfsPoetWritingHumansKindOughtPoetrySometimesWant

Famous James Dickey Quotes

“... Up telephone poles, Which rear, half out of leavage As though they would shriek Like things smothered by their own Green, mindless, unkillable ghosts. In Georgia, the legend says That you must close your windows At night to keep it out of the house The glass is tinged with green, even so, As the tendrils crawl over the fields. The night the Kudzu has Your pasture, you sleep like the dead. Silence has grown oriental And you cannot step upon the ground... ALL: Kudzu by James Dickey”

PoetryKudzu
Author:James Dickey
Create image

“The Heaven of Animals Here they are. The soft eyes open. If they have lived in a wood It is a wood. If they have lived on plains It is grass rolling Under their feet forever. Having no souls, they have come, Anyway, beyond their knowing. Their instincts wholly bloom And they rise. The soft eyes open. To match them, the landscape flowers, Outdoing, desperately Outdoing what is required: The richest wood, The deepest field. For some of these, It could not be the place It is, without blood. These hunt, as they have done, But with claws and teeth grown perfect, More deadly than they can believe. They stalk more silently, And crouch on the limbs of trees, And their descent Upon the bright backs of their prey May take years In a sovereign floating of joy. And those that are hunted Know this as their life, Their reward: to walk Under such trees in full knowledge Of what is in glory above them, And to feel no fear, But acceptance, compliance. Fulfilling themselves without pain At the cycle’s center, They tremble, they walk Under the tree, They fall, they are torn, They rise, they walk again.”

DeathPoetryHeavenLossPoemAnimalsDeath Of A PetLoss Of A Pet
Book:The Whole Motion: Collected Poems, 1945–1992
Create image

“It takes an awful lot of time for me to write anything. I have endless drafts, one after another; and I try out 50, 75, or a hundred variations on a single line sometimes. I work on the process of refining low-grade ore. I get maybe a couple of nu ggets of gold out of 50 tons of dirt. It is tough for me. No, I am not inspired.”

WritingTryingSometimesProcessLinesCoupleLowsHundredToughGoldInspiredEndlessCraftsAwfulGradesDirtVariationRefiningSingle Line
Author:James Dickey
Create image

“What a view, i said again. The river was blank and mindless with beauty. It was the most glorious thing I have ever seen. But it was not seeing, really. For once it was not just seeing. It was beholding. I beheld the river in its icy pit of brightness, in its far-below sound and indifference, in its large coil and tiny points and flashes of the moon, in its long sinuous form, in its uncomprehending consequence.”

LongSaidFormSoundViewsSeeingMoonConsequenceRiversTinyIndifferenceGloriousFlashBlankPitsBrightnessMindlessIcy
Book:Deliverance
Create image