Amazon.com Amazon.com Review (ISBN 0819512184, Paperback)

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.