Approaching Prayer is a critical study in a mythopoeic mode of two of the most distinguished southern poets of the second half of the twentieth century - A. R. Ammons and James Dickey. Not a comparative study in the traditional style, this work explores two lines of separate inquiry into how each writer employs myth and ritual in creating his art. Kirschten finds that, although Ammons and Dickey differed radically in emotion, method, and format, their poetry shares ancient ceremonial strategies that require close comparison with a plurality of religious traditions.