James Dickey citations

“Je crois que les machines se casseront, que les systèmes politiques feront faillites et que finalement, quelques hommes prendront le maquis et recommenceront à zéro.”

Délivrance, 1970

“Je suis avec vous, mais pas des vôtres.”

Délivrance, 1970

“La mort est toujours bête.”

Délivrance, 1970

“Le monde se perd facilement.”

Délivrance, 1970

“Malgré toutes nos malchances, je crois que les dieux sont avec nous.”

Délivrance, 1970

“A poet is someone who stands outside in the rain hoping to be struck by lightning.”

Délivrance, 1970

James Dickey: Citations en anglais

“What you have to realize when you write poetry, or if you love poetry, is that poetry is just naturally the greatest god damn thing that ever was in the whole universe”

“I have just come down from my father.
Higher and higher he lies
Above me in a blue light
Shed by a tinted window.”

“I saw for a blazing moment
The great grassy world from both sides,
Man and beast in the round of their need.”

The Hospital Window (l. 1–4).
The Whole Motion; Collected Poems, 1945-1992 (1992)

“Drunk on the wind in my mouth,
Wringing the handlebar for speed,
Wild to be wreckage forever.”

The Sheep Child (l. 41–43).
The Whole Motion; Collected Poems, 1945-1992 (1992)

“Dust fanned in scraped puffs from the earth
Between his arms, and blood turned his face inside out,
To demonstrate its suppleness
Of veins, as he perfected his role.”

Cherrylog Road (l. 106–108).
The Whole Motion; Collected Poems, 1945-1992 (1992)

“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.”

The Performance (l. 13–16).
The Whole Motion; Collected Poems, 1945-1992 (1992)

“She is watching her country lose its evoked master shape watching it lose
And gain get back its houses and peoples watching it bring up
Its local lights single homes lamps on barn roofs.”

The Heaven of Animals (l. 1–6).
The Whole Motion; Collected Poems, 1945-1992 (1992)

“These hunt, as they have done
But with claws and teeth grown perfect,
More deadly than they can believe.”

Falling (l. 66–68).
The Whole Motion; Collected Poems, 1945-1992 (1992)

“With the plane nowhere and her body taking by the throat
The undying cry of the void falling living beginning to be something
That no one has ever been and lived through screaming without enough air.”

The Heaven of Animals (l. 20–22).
The Whole Motion; Collected Poems, 1945-1992 (1992)

“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.”

Falling (l. 9–11).
The Whole Motion; Collected Poems, 1945-1992 (1992)

“It was something like love
From another world that seized her
From behind, and she gave, not lifting her head
Out of dew, without ever looking, her best
Self to that great need.”

The Heaven of Animals (l. 29–34).
The Whole Motion; Collected Poems, 1945-1992 (1992)