Unfortunately, none of the poems (or translations "from the UnEnglish") in The Strength of Fields measures up to "The Performance," "The Sheep-Child" or "Falling." In recent years Dickey has forsaken traditional meter for a broken line using a "gap technique," somewhat reminiscent of late William Carlos Williams. At times he has employed it with splendid effect—especially in "Butterflies" where his typographical fragments were able to mirror the flitting of butterflies—but here it is overly ragged and abrupt. Read aloud, or even better, declaimed by Dickey himself, these story poems can generate great power….

Still another novelty in the later work is Dickey's increased regard for noun-compounds ("root-light," "moth-force," "death-mud," "stomach-pool"), which at best seem unnecessary and at worst unclear. Such broken lines and neologisms, embedded in an extremely convoluted syntax, recall the kennings and interlace patterns of Old English poetry. Indeed, Dickey almost invites the comparison with ancient skalds and bards, men who could do battle as well as sing of it. His themes are those of Beowulf: memories of war ("Two Poems of the Military"), praise for a leader ("The Strength of Fields"), masculine comradeship ("Reunioning Dialogue"), paeans to a past champion ("For the Death of Lombardi"), athletic contests ("For the Running of the New York City Marathon"), boastful stories ("False Youth: Autumn: Clothes of the Age") and the power of the minstrel ("The Rain Guitar").

Regrettably, in this book Dickey fails to bring his language to life. He relies on tricks of syntax, rather than on the word that hits the heart like a bullet. Much of the time the verse offers ordinary conversation or the symbol-laden description of an action, tagged with a Wordsworthian moral. One feels that Dickey is more interested in ideas or memories than he is in words—and this is fatal for poetry. Moreover, "The Strength of Fields" comes close to the kind of official verse Dickey himself condemned in Self-Interviews. Other pieces feel raw, imprecise. Hardly a line is memorable, though some of the poems in their entirety are rudely effective….

Like Whitman or Twain, Dickey seems in a characteristic American tradition, ever ready to light out for new territories. In his fifties, he is still a developing writer, who even in The Strength of Fields retains a strong and unmistakable voice.