James Dickey

James Lafayette Dickey (February 2, 1923 – January 19, 1997) was an American poet and novelist. From 1966 to 1968 he was the eighteenth United States Poet Laureate.

James Dickey
Born	James Lafayette Dickey (1923-02-02)February 2, 1923 Atlanta, Georgia, United States
Died	January 19, 1997(1997-01-19) (aged 73) Columbia, South Carolina, United States
Occupation	Poet novelist critic lecturer
Nationality	American
Period	20th century
Genre	Poetry, fiction
Notable works	Deliverance Buckdancer's Choice Falling, May Day Sermon, and Other Poems To the White Sea
Notable awards	National Book Award for Poetry Guggenheim Fellowship United States Poet Laureate (1966-68) Order of the South
Spouses	Maxine Syerson ​ ​ (m. 1948; died 1976)​ Deborah Dodson ​ (m. 1976)​
Children	Christopher Dickey, Kevin Dickey, Bronwen Dickey
Signature

Dickey was born in Buckhead, Georgia, a suburb of Atlanta. He read Lord Byron's poetry when he was young. In high school, he was good at football. He played varsity at Clemson College in South Carolina. World War II caused him to leave Clemson in 1942. He joined the U. S. Air Force and fought in the Asian and Pacific area.^[1] He started writing poetry during this time.^[2]

After the war, he finished his college work by getting a masters degree at Vanderbilt University. He taught for a while, but got a job writing advertisements to make more money.^[2]

In 1966, his poetry book Buckdancer's Choice won the National Book Award. Three of his other books were finalists: Helmets (1965), Deliverance (1971), and Sorties (1972). Deliverance was a novel that later was made into a movie.^[3]

He read a poem, "The Strength of Fields," at President Carter's inauguration in 1977.^[4] He was also a judge from 1990 to 1996 of the Yale Younger Poets Series.^[5]

Poetry

• Into the Stone and Other Poems (in Poets of Today VII) (1960)
• Drowning with Others (1962)
• Two Poems of the Air (1964)
• Helmets (1964)
• Buckdancer's Choice: Poems (1965)
• Poems 1957-67 (1967)
• The Eye-Beaters, Blood, Victory, Madness, Buckhead and Mercy (1970)
• Exchanges (1971)
• The Zodiac (1976)
• The Owl King (1977)
• Veteran Birth: The Gadfly Poems 1947-49 (1978)
• Tucky the Hunter (1978)
• Head-Deep in Strange Sounds: Free-Flight Improvisations from the unEnglish (1979)
• The Strength of Fields (1979)
• 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)
• The Central Motion: Poems 1968-79 (1983)
• Bronwen, The Traw, and the Shape-Shifter: A Poem in Four Parts (1986)
• Summons (1988)
• The Eagle's Mile (1990)
• The Whole Motion: Collected Poems, 1945–1992
• The Selected Poems (1998)
• The Complete Poems of James Dickey (2013)
• Death, and the Day's Light (2015)

Novels

• Deliverance (1970)
• Alnilam (1987)
• To the White Sea (1993)

Related pages

• List of poets from North America