Summons. The Place of the Skull. The Baggage King. Patience: In the Mill. The Liberator Explodes. The Place of the Skull. Obstructions. The Confrontation of the Hero. The Courtship. Peacetime: Seeking the Chosen. A Morning. Drifting. Adam in Winter. Lazarus to the Assembled. Paestum. Via Appia. Wall and Cloud. The Rafters. The Sprinter at Forty. Walking the Fire Line. Seeking the Chosen. The Angel of the Maze. Blowgun and Rattlesnake. At the Home for Unwed Mothers. Reading Genesis to a Blind Child. Homages. Walter Armistead. For Richard Wilbur. For Robert Bhain Campbell -- Into the Stone. Sleeping Out at Easter. The Underground Stream. The String. The Vegetable King. The Enclosure. The Jewel. The Performance. The Wedding. The Other. Trees and Cattle. Walking on Water. Awaiting the Swimmer. On the Hill Below the Lighthouse. Near Darien. Into the Stone -- Drowning with Others. The Lifeguard. Listening to Foxhounds. A Dog Sleeping on My Feet. The Movement of Fish

For over three decades, James Dickey has been one of the nation's most important poets and a prominent man of letters. The Eagle's Mile, his most recent volume, was a triumphant success, a bold and innovative departure from his traditional verse. The New York Times declared, "Dickey continues to extend his vision as a major American poet," while Fred Chappell, himself a Bollingen Prize winner, wrote, "If there were a literary prize for Poetry That Has Shown Real Moxie, it ought to go to The Eagle's Mile."

Now, The Whole Motion collects Dickey's oeuvre into a single volume: 235 poems, ranging from his first book, Into the Stone, through the prize-winning Buckdancer's Choice, to The Eagle's Mile, as well as a selection of previously uncollected and unpublished "apprentice" works gathered under the title "Summons." The Whole Motion documents the development of a major literary figure, one who has greatly influenced a younger generation of poets; it illuminates the evolution of one of the finest poetic sensibilities of our times