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| 3/28/1970 |
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James Dickey and Deliverance
On this day in 1970, James Dickey's Deliverance was published. Although praised primarily as a poet -- thirty collections by the time of his death in 1997 -- Dickey's tale of four suburb-dwellers on a manly descent into camping nightmare is described as "an allegory of fear and survival" and "a Heart of Darkness for our time" by the critics; son Christopher describes it as the beginning of the end for Dickey himself. |
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Academy of American Poets
Offers a biography, bibliography, and links.
"In 1961 Dickey gave up the work to accept a Guggenheim Fellowship and spend a year in Italy with his family. Two of his most famous volumes of verse, Helmets (1964) and Buckdancer's Choice -— for which he was awarded the National Book Award in 1965 -— were published soon afterward. Dickey then taught, lectured, and wrote. From 1966 to 1968 he held the position of Poetry Consultant to the Library of Congress, an office that would later become the Poet Laureate. In 1970 he penned his best-selling novel, Deliverance. The book, which was later made into a major motion picture, exposed readers to scenes of violence and nightmarish horror, much as his poetry had done." |  | Interview with Don Swaim
"James Dickey, decorated fighter pilot, U.S. poet laureate, and author of the novel, Deliverance, talks to Don Swaim about advertising, being on welfare, hunting, drinking, writing in his novel Anilam, the distinction between writing fiction and poetry, his writing style, and teaching poetry at the University of South Carolina in this 1987 interview." (27 minutes) | | James Dickey in The Atlantic Monthly
Features audio of Dickey reading "For the Last Wolverine" and "The Sheep-Child," and the full electronic text to "May Day Sermon." Two articles are also provided: a 1998 review of Christopher Dickey's memoir, Summer of Deliverance, and a 1967 article in which Dickey and Robert Lowell are suggested as the successors to Robert Frost, Wallace Stevens, William Carlos Williams, and Theodore Roethke. | | Modern American Poetry
Offers a short biography, chronology of events in the poet's life, selected poems, ("The Shark's Parlor" and "The Last Wolverine"), and critical analysis of "The Sheep Child" and "Falling."
"The early books, influenced obviously though not slavishly by Theodore Roethke and perhaps Hopkins, are infused with a sense of private anxiety and guilt. Both emotions are called forth most deeply by the memories of a brother who died before Dickey was born ('In the Tree House at Night') and his war experiences ('Drinking From a Helmet'). These early poems generally employ rhyme and metre. ... With Buckdancer's Choice, Dickey left traditional formalism behind, developing what he called a 'split-line' technique to vary the rhythm and look of the poem. Some critics argue that by doing so Dickey freed his true poetic voice. Others lament that the lack of formal device led to rhetorical, emotional, and intellectual excess." | |
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The TinL masthead features photography by
Natasha D'Schommer
, and the book art featured is by Jim Rosenau.
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