James Dickey, backwoods southerner, high school athletic star, flight navigator in World War II and the Korean War, renowned teacher, distinguished consultant in poetry to the Library of Congress and of course, famous best-selling author. Dickey takes these life experiences to inspire and form much of the subject matter in his vast collection of artistic poetry. In “Dust” Dickey delves deeply into meaningless subjects when he says “But the shape of the finger that runs along it leaving a trail” (1957-1967 Dickey 228). However, he also looks at complex subjects like death. For example, in the poem “Falling” a poem about a flight attendant who fatally falls from an airplane “with the plane nowhere and her body taking by the throat” (293). He expresses his thoughts by constructing straightforward, dramatically developed poetry. Dickey feels “honest reaction to experience, intuitive reaction—nothing is of greater consequence than that” (115 Interviews). In James Dickey’s poetry he uses the narrative form, vivid imagery, and then manipulates the line through the split-line technique and enjambment to express the ramifications of dying on life. Dickey’s poetry finds the narrative form of poetry the best way to convey his idea that one of the consequences of death is sometimes guilt. While the reader is transfixed on the fascinating story that Dickey is telling through his poetry, Dickey exposes the guilt one can feel over the death of others. “The Underground Stream” is a narrative poem that tells the story of parents who have another child in order to replace a child they lost. The child in the story feels extreme guilt over the death of his older brother. The child reveals the guilt he feels in the line, “And claim his own grave face/That mine might live in its place” (1957-1967 Dickey 19). Again, Dickey uses narrative poetry to explore the costs of death on one’s life in his war poetry. In “Drinking From a Helmet” Dickey weaves a tale of a soldier who finds the helmet of an enemy soldier. Although the helmet once belonged to an adversary who was trying to kill him, he feels guilt over his death. Dickey emphasizes the guilt he feels when the soldier says, “A Helmet I picked from the ground/where somebody else may have come” (1957-1967 Dickey 173). Dickey’s long narrative “Firebombing” examines a fighter pilot’s guilt over dropping bombs on innocent victims of war. The guilt about death is seen when the veteran reminisces, "… when those on earth/ Die there is not even sound; one is cool and enthralled in the cockpit/ Turned blue by the power of beauty/ … this detachment/ The honored aesthetic evil … " (183). Dickey examines through narrative poetry the guilt one suffers when death occurs. Another literary device Dickey utilizes throughout his poetry to reveal his thought about death is imagery. Dickey’s poetry is not always obviously about death, he uses images of death or dying in much of his work. "Mortality wails out" (Central Motion 11) in "Mercy," "the wagon-master / Blazing in death / With life:" in "Two Poems of Going Home, Part I, Living There," (14) are examples of how death emerges in a poem that is not blatantly about death. Dickey’s vivid images of death are dramatic and meant to be jarring to the innocent reader. They often involve the physicality of the animal kingdom. The natural brutality is seen in “The Last Wolverine:” “Of whitening snarls. Let him eat The last red meal of the condemned To extinction / tearing the guts / From an elk” (1957-1967 Dickey 276). Dickey’s intentions are to create these images of death to place the reader out of their comfort zone. Dickey vividly describes in “The Leap” "Mother of four, leapt to her death from a window / Of a downtown hotel, and that her body crushed-in / The top of a parked taxi" (284). It is obvious that the woman dies, but his intention is for the reader to have a graphic image of her body landing on the taxi. By doing this he believes, the reader will see that sometimes life can be wasted and death as pointless. Vivid imagery is an integral literary device that Dickey uses to convey his view about death. Finally, Dickey creates unique poetry by controlling the line in order to emphasize his philosophies about death. One way he does this is by using the split-line technique. “By breaking up his lines into clusters of words Dickey attempted to capture the characteristics of thought when it associates rapidly, and in detail, in regard to a specific subject, an action, an event, a theme” (Suarez 243). “Falling” is a poem where Dickey masterfully uses the split-line to show the flight attendant plunging towards death as an analogy of man’s descent through life, where every second takes one nearer to death. Dickey patterns the text to reflect the increasing speed with which the flight attendant descends toward earth and death. The last line of the poem has the greatest spaces between words, signally her eminent death: “No and tries less once tries tries tries AH, GOD” (1957-1967 Dickey 299). Here with the split-line technique, Dickey reminds the reader that death is an inevitable part of life in which everyone is cursed. Dickey also manipulates the line in his poetry through deliberate enjambment to express his views about death. He uses this poetic device in “The Last Wolverine”: “Lord, let me die but not die Out” (1957-1967 Dickey 278). He places the word “Out” alone on a line to emphasize that one’s fear should not be death, but extinction. Dickey intentionally places the words and punctuation of his poetry so that the reader clearly understands the ramifications that death can have on one’s life.