Cherrylog Road

“Cherrylog Road” is a narrative poem by the mid-to-late 20th-century American poet James Dickey. It was first published in the New Yorker in 1963 and was reprinted in Dickey’s third collection of poetry, Helmets, in 1964. “Cherrylog Road” is one of his most popular and accessible poems and it is frequently anthologized. It is an exuberant and amusing story about a wild sexual adventure involving an adolescent boy and girl in a junkyard full of vintage cars. The poem has serious themes as well. It presents the wonder and excitement of the first emergence of masculine sexual power in the boy as he enters adolescence. It is also typical of Dickey’s themes in that it presents the unleashing of primal energies that result in moments of heightened being and awareness—in this case, the thrill of sexual conquest for the male.

Poet Biography

James Dickey was born on February 2, 1923, in Atlanta, Georgia. Inspired by his father, he read poetry from an early age, and he was also a high school football star. In 1942, during World War II, he enlisted in the U.S. Army Air Force and flew more than a hundred missions in the Pacific. He also served in the United States Air Force during the Korean War and was awarded the Air Medal. After the war, he enrolled in Vanderbilt University, graduating with a degree in English and philosophy in 1949. The following year he earned a master’s degree in English from the same institution. By this point he was determined to become a writer. From 1950 to 1956, he taught at Rice University and at the University of Florida in Gainesville. He then switched careers and for the remainder of the decade, he was an advertising executive in New York City and Atlanta. His first collection of poetry, Into the Stone and Other Poems, was published in 1960 and after that he became a full-time writer. After Drowning with Others (1962) and Two Poems of the Air (1964), he published Helmets in 1964, which contained “Cherrylog Road” and became one of his most successful books. The following year Buckdancer's Choice was published and received the National Book Award in 1966.

From 1963 to 1968 Dickey was poet-in-residence at a number of universities, and from 1966 to 1968 he was Poetry Consultant to the Library of Congress. In 1969, he joined the faculty of the University of South Carolina, and one year later his best-selling novel Deliverance was published. In 1972, Deliverance was made into a movie starring Burt Reynolds. Dickey wrote the screenplay and also played a role in the film. In 1977, Dickey read “The Strength of Fields” at President Carter's inauguration. His poetry collections during the 1970s included Exchanges (1971), The Zodiac (1976), and The Owl King (1977).

During the 1980s, Dickey continued to publish poetry at a fast rate, including Falling, May Day Sermon, and Other Poems (1981), The Early Motion (1981), Puella (1982), Värmland (1982), False Youth: Four Seasons (1983), For a Time and Place (1983), Intervisions (1983), Bronwen, The Traw, and the Shape-Shifter: A Poem in Four Parts (1986), and Summons (1988). His The Whole Motion: Collected Poems, 1945-1992 appeared in 1992. He also wrote two more novels, Alnilam (1987) and To the White Sea (1993).

In November 1948, Dickey married Maxine Syerson; they had two sons. After Maxine died in 1976, Dickey married Deborah Dodson, and they had a daughter in 1981. Dickey died on January 19, 1997, following complications of lung disease.

Poem Text

Dickey, James. “Cherrylog Road.” 1964. Poetry Foundation.

Summary

“Cherrylog Road” consists of eighteen stanzas of six lines each. It describes a sexual encounter between a teenage boy and girl in an automobile junkyard somewhere in the South on a warm spring or summer day. The poem is narrated in the first person by the boy. The junkyard is located on Cherrylog Road, and beginning in the first stanza the boy describes some of the cars in the yard as he waits for his girl to arrive. The first car he gets into is a Ford, which he imagines having been used to transport bootleg corn whiskey. In stanza 2, he enters an old Essex automobile and then a Chevrolet. He is just amusing himself until noon, when the girl, Doris Holbrook, would come to the junkyard from the nearby farm where she lives with her father. The boy climbs in and out of many of the cars (stanzas 4 and 5), including right at the center of the yard an old luxury car, the Pierce-Arrow. As he gets in it, he notices that parts of the glass panel that separates driver and passenger are still there. The backseat phone is still there too, and he imagines the lady owner giving instructions to the black driver (stanzas 7 and 8). In stanza 9, he hears some sounds that make him think Doris may have arrived, and he thinks eagerly about what they are going to do together (stanza 11); he hopes in stanza 12 that she will come and go without leaving any traces of him for her fearsome father to discover, for he would surely whip her and then lie in wait for him. Finally, in stanza 13 Doris arrives, and by stanza 15 they are having vigorous sex in the oldest car in the junkyard. When they are finished, they leave by separate doors. The boy roars off on his motorcycle while Doris walks alone back to the farm.