The Complete Poems of James Dickey is an authoritative edition of all 331 poems published by one of America's most distinguished poets, collected in one volume for the first time. Dickey's most-admired and most-anthologised poems—such as ""The Performance,"" ""Cherrylog Road,"" ""The Firebombing,"" ""Falling,"" and ""May Day Sermon""—along with his epic poem The Zodiac are placed in chronological order of publication, affording a poetic autobiography that reveals the intellectual development and the constant experimentation of an iconic American literary figure.

This collection includes 93 poems Dickey did not publish in The Whole Motion (1992), 238 poems that he collected as an overview of his whole career. The Complete Poems of James Dickey also includes an apparatus listing publication data and textual variants for the poems, as well as explanatory notes placing Dickey's poetry in biographical and historical context. Edited with an introduction by Ward Briggs, this authoritative and complete edition will be the definitive primary source for Dickey's poetry.

This collection includes a foreword by poet Richard Howard, president of the PEN American Center and winner of the Pulitzer Prize for his 1969 collection, Untitled Subjects.