In the first major long poem of his career, James Dickey finds inspiration in the experiences of a real-life Dutch sailor, Hendrik Marsman, who during a lifetime at sea was bedazzled by the constellations and possessed by the mysteries of the zodiac. On the verge of madness, he wrote bits of poetry, and it is from these fragments of Marsman's verse that Dickey has fashioned his most masterly work to date.