James Dickey

James Dickey 

on February 2, 1923, James Dickey was born in Buckhead, Georgia, a suburb of Atlanta. He started liking poetry because of his father, who would read him famous speeches.  He enlisted to the airforce and in his spare time he would read work by Conrad Aikin.  He had a taste for apocalyptic poems.  He had many jobs as a writer, but wasn't first published until 1960, Into The Stone, And Other Poems. 
Dickey's poem tend to address humanity and violence by presenting the instincts of humans and animals as opposing to the false safety of civilization.

The Firebombing

Home-owners unite.

All Families lie togther, though some are burned alive.
The others try to feel
For them. Some can, it is often said.

Starve and take off

Twenty years in the suburbs, and the palm trees willingly leap
Into the flashlights,
And there is beneath them also
A booted crackling of snailshells and coral-sticks.
There are cowl flaps and the tilt cross of propellers,

Then shovel-marked clouds’ far sides against the moon,
The enemy filling up the hills
With ceremonial graves. At my somewhere among these,

Snap, a bulb is tricked on in the cockpit
And some technical-minded stranger with my hands
Is sitting in a glass treasure-hole of blue light,
Having potential fire under the undeodorized arms
Of his wings, on thin bomb shackles,
The “tear-drop-shaped” 300-gallon drop-tanks

I believe that this poem is talking about his times as a pilot in the Air force.  He is describing people dying, bombs, and  graves.  At first I thought it might be a peaceful poem, but it goes into more and more detail about what he is exactly talking about.  I think he may have had some really hard times while in war, and this was one way to let those emotions go and let the world know how he felt.
It is poems like these that show Dickey's strong visual and descriptive poetry and poetic style deviated from other great writers. "His poetry is confessional, largely apolitical, and directly focused on the interactions of people with the natural as well as the technologically transformed modern world" (Rupperburg).

Ruppersburg, Hugh. "New Georgia Encyclopedia: James Dickey (1923-1997)." New Georgia Encyclopedia: James Dickey (1923-1997). University of Georgia, n.d. Web. 14 Dec. 2012.