Dickey once commented: “To have guilt you’ve got to earn guilt, but sometimes when you earn it, you don’t feel the guilt you ought to have. And that’s what ‘The Firebombing’ is about.”
-- Sherry Chandler's blog
"Firebombing"

"The Greatest Generation" of American Poets?

An interesting post from Ron Silliman:

One could make an argument that there was a renaissance in American poetry, and that these poets were at the heart thereof, but it’s much more concentrated than, say, the Prohibition years. I’d go so far as to argue that it really concentrated around poets born between 1925 & ’27, tho the outer ring reaches back to 1922 & forward to 1930. Just 9 of the 63 poets in my augmented list were born outside of those years, while 26 were born in those three crucial years between ’25 & ’27.

It’s worth thinking about what that means in terms of American poetry, what social conditions emerged during the years in which those poets came into their lives as poets. It’s also worth noting that of the 63 poets, just two – Kaufman & Anderson – are African-American. The most obvious is that these are poets, especially those born in 1925 onward, who escaped WW2, but got to reap the benefits of economic prosperity & a rapidly expanding educational system, that both democratized post-secondary education after the war and ensured that pretty much anyone who wanted to could get a teaching job.

Second, not one, but both traditions in American writing underwent profound transformations in the 1950s, with the New American Poetry arising out of a strand that had mixed roots in both modernism & an Americanist tradition that could be traced further even than Whitman, while the neo-colonialist Anglophile poetics of the more genteel tradition likewise saw a hard rupture in the revolt of The Fifties, as Bly, Wright, Merwin, Rich & even Hall moved away from their own heritage of closed forms to embrace aspects of European literature & a more open poetics. What’s notably absent from Carruth’s list (& my expansion of it) are direct descendants of the agrarians: Randall Jarrell, Robert Penn Warren et al. James Dickey & Jonathan Williams are the only real southerners here, neither of whom could be so described. The closest you might get are indirect descendants, all students of Robert Lowell’s. Indeed one might say that the disappearance of the agrarian strain in American poetry is nearly as dramatic as that of the Objectivists, except that the Objectivists returned circa 1960, while the closed verse poetics of the agrarians simmered underground before returning as the New Formalism of a decade later.

So in the 1950s you had this clash between these two traditions – the raw & the cooked, as Lowell himself put it – but even the cooked poets were offering a version of nouveau cuisine, each side with its own variants. Phil Levine is as unlike Sylvia Plath as Gregory Corso is to Jonathan Williams. The degree to which these poets were their generation is worth underscoring. If I pick up one of the big double-issues of Poetry from that period, such as the October-November 1963 number, every single American poet born between 1920 and 1933 comes from the list above. All but two of the rest are older poets: John Berryman, J.V. Cunningham, Jean Garrigue, Randall Jarrell, Lowell, Charles Olson, Henry Rago, Theodore Roethke, Karl Shapiro, Elizabeth Bishop, Vernon Watkins & Louise Zukofsky. There is one poet who is younger, Ronald Johnson, born in 1935, and one British poet from this period, Charles Tomlinson. The 1965 double issue has fewer poets who are older (Robert Duncan, Charles Olson, Ernest Sandeen & Ted Weiss), and two who were born after 1933 (Ronald Johnson again, and Wendell Berry, born in 1934). Again there are two Brits, Tomlinson & Gael Turnbull, and nine poets from my expanded list: Carruth, Creeley, Kinnell, Koch, Levertov, Rich, Sexton, Snyder & Whalen. There is however one not on my list but from that generation, David Posner, born in 1921, educated at Kenyon & Oxford, who taught for awhile at the University of Buffalo & at the University of California (it’s not clear at which campus). Posner’s status within the canon, which is pretty much nil, tells you everything you need to know about the boundaries of this list.

The degree of prominence that so many members of this “greatest generation” earned was not solely because they were fabulous (some were, some weren’t), but because they were it, pretty much the sum of what was available by writers in that age cohort during those years. In 1960, they were the poets between the ages of 27 and 40. Ginsberg, for example, was just 34.

But by the middle 1960s, you already had the kudzuing of MFA programs across the land, meaning that there were an increasing number of writers everywhere. If you look at my expanded roster, one thing you will notice is that most of the poets who did not teach, or at least not teach much, during that decade, came primarily from the post-avant tradition: Eigner, Ashbery, O’Hara, Schuyler, Corso, Ginsberg, Spicer, Blackburn, Whalen, Corman. Ashbery & Ginsberg would go on to teach later, but not during that critical decade. So that even tho the numbers of post-avants and quietists are almost even in that expanded list, ten, fifteen years hence creative writing programs would acquire a distinct orientation – and reputation – they are only now fully outgrowing. ....(read on)

An Interview on the Occasion of James Dickey's Birthday

Scott Bowen posted this interesting little documentary on his blog along with an e-mail interview he did with Christopher Dickey:

For James Dickey: A birthday interview with his son, Christopher Dickey

Image via Wikipedia

Poet, novelist, and critic James Lafayette Dickey was born today, February 2, in 1923. He died 13 years ago, on January 19, 1997, at the age of 74.

In his time, he wrote a ton of magnificent poetry unlike anything his contemporaries produced, and three novels. He won the National Book Award in 1965 for his book of poems, Buckdancer’s Choice, and served as the Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 1966 to 1968.

I had the great good fortune to have studied with Dickey while in graduate school, and benefitted from his mentorship and friendship. I remember him joking at one of his Groundhog Day birthday parties, “The fox knows many things, but the groundhog knows one really big thing,” a quip I heard him repeat a few other times, as he was wont to retell his favorite notions.

Much of Dickey’s poetry has deep connections to nature, and examines thoroughly the exalting and conflicted relationship humans have with nature as they find it, and with their own origins in the natural world.

On what would have been James Dickey’s 87th birthday, I caught up with his eldest son, Christopher Dickey, the Paris Bureau Chief and Middle East Editor for Newsweek magazine, to ask some questions via e-mail about his father’s work, and about his own. ... http://trueslant.com/scottbowen/2010/02/02/for-james-dickey-a-birthday-interview-with-his-son-christopher-dickey/

February 2: James Dickey's Birthday

He would have been 87 today.

Real Estate News: "Famous Citizens" of Columbia S.C.

Famous Citizens: Coach Steve Spurrier; anchor Rita Cosby; Leeza Gibbons; astronaut Charles Bolden; the late novelist and poet James Dickey; novelist William Price Fox; the late Republican National Committee Chairman Lee Atwater; Miss America Kimberly Aiken; Hootie and the Blowfish; actress Kristen Davis; Strom Thurmond; Jesse Jackson; the late James Brown; comedian Steven Colbert
http://edwingeraceblog.blogspot.com/2010/01/columbia-sc-state-capital.html

A Clearer Picture: The "Goodbye to Serpents" plaque in the Jardin des Plantes, Paris, France

The poem was published in The New Yorker in September 1963. But our first visits to the Jardin des Plantes were in 1954.

"Poems 1957-1967" Back in Print

This from David Havird -- and we cannot thank him enough for his efforts:

"Chris, I wish you'd include this link among your "Deep Deliverance" links:
http://www.facebook.com/l/865aa;www.upne.com/0-8195-3073-5.html. It will let readers know that Poems 1957-1967 is back in print. I was after Wesleyan for years to bring it back, and the editor there finally agreed a couple of years ago--by then they had the ability to do small runs. I use it in courses whenever possible. Otherwise, it doesn't seem to get much play--or distribution. For me it's *the* essential book by a post-WWII American poet. BTW, I was a student and later friend of your dad's--I knew your mother well. I think that you and I met only once--when I was by the house in the mid 80s. As I remember, you were rummaging through the garage the whole time I was there. All the best, David"

James Dickey in the Marble Quarry, Robert Penn Warren in Vermont stone, Randall Jarrell moving from Cheer to Joy, from Joy to All

I don't know who "Walter" is, really, apart from the fact that he's created a Web site with the url www.deadpoes.org and has a Maine license plate on his Dodge van that reads DEDGAR. But I like the handful of videos I've watched on his Vimeo channel, http://vimeo.com/deadpoets . There is something weirdly appealing, both homespun and hi-tech, about the whole notion of seeking out poets' graves and reading their works, then broadcasting on the Web so the whole world can share the experience. I think somebody should read James Dickey's "In the Treehouse at Night" in the graveyard at All Saints Waccamaw. (His epitaph, suggested by William Styron, is from that poem.) But in the meantime, these are four videos Walter posted that I found interesting, and there are dozens more that I have yet to watch. - CD

James Dickey's "In the Marble Quarry" read by Coleman Barks whose friends like buried beneath Georgia marble, with a final sequence showing James Dickey's own gravestone in South Carolina:

"In the Marble Quarry" By James Dickey from Walter on Vimeo.

Walter's Blair Witch visit to the graves of Robert Penn Warren and Eleanor Clark in Vermont in the dead of night is a little silly, and there is no reading, but it is hard to forget:

Cemetery Sleepover With Robert Penn Warren from Walter on Vimeo.

Stuard Dischell reads Randall Jarrell's stunning poem about the banality and tragedy of age, "Next Day," as he stands beside Jarrell's grave in Greensboro, North Carolina.

"Next Day" By Randall Jarrell from Walter on Vimeo.

Walter reads Roethke's "On the Road to Woodlawn" and some of Roethke's favorite lines from Sir Walter Raleigh:

Roethke & Sir Walter Raleigh from Walter on Vimeo.

"Goodbye to Serpents": The James Dickey Bench at the Jardin des Plantes, Paris

Watching the Gabon Viper.






And as we were leaving the Jardin des Plantes, this "Encounter in the Cage Country."

Bull Sluice

When we were filming "Deliverance" in 1971, I was nearly killed in precisely this place doing much the same thing on the Chatooga River. We took a rubber raft over the edge, thinking we would bounce through, and instead it stayed in the middle of this torrent. My friends fell out and went downstream, but I stayed in the middle of the pounding water trying to rescue the raft (which belonged to Warner Bros.). Somebody threw me a rope, but it kept wrapping around me as I tried to find something to tie it to. Afraid that I would be strangled, I finally just held onto the rope and fell over the side, straight to the bottom before I was dragged out a little battered and white from fright. All of this is in "Summer of Deliverance," of course. Page 191, I believe: http://tinyurl.com/y8n3o96
-- CD

The Nature of James Dickey and Gary Snyder

This is an interesting essay by John Yohe comparing James Dickey's views of nature with those of another poet and contemporary of his, Gary Snyder. There are some factual errors in the brief biography of Dickey (he was a navigator and radio operator during World War II, not a "radar technician," and he didn't start teaching at Florida until 1954 -- that sort of thing). But the basic problem with Yohe's take is that he sees Dickey as threatened by nature and by such animals as the wolverine when in fact the key to his work was the ecstatic transformation of the poet/writer into the animals themselves. If there is something "threatening" about the beasts it is not the way they are in nature, but the way they exist inside of us. That is also part of what makes the animals -- and the poems -- so fascinating.

Having said that, it's worth noting that Dickey always liked to cite Aldous Huxley's essay "Wordsworth in the Tropics," about which see this interesting post of an interview with Peter Gilbert in Vermont: http://www.vpr.net/episode/44532/

Readers might also be amused by this post on the Dickey Scrapbook, which is a companion blog to this one: http://dickeyscrapbook.blogspot.com/2009/09/goodbye-to-serpents.html

In any case, for anyone interested in these subjects, Yohe's essay is worth a read:

Gary Snyder and James Dickey were born only seven years apart, and both went on to become famous poets from the 1960’s through to the 1990’s. They are both known as "nature" poets (Snyder more than Dickey), but each has a distinctive view of nature, as well as a distinctive poetic style. I was intrigued by the fact that both of their views on nature seemed to be true, or correct. I want to examine both the similarities and differences between these views, with the intention of finding out whether one view is "more true", or better, than the other.... http://tinyurl.com/yfovrqe

James Dickey and Typewriters

The L.C. Smith on which Dickey wrote Deliverance
Photographs (c) Christopher Dickey

A James Dickey quote many a writer will relate to, picked up by Scott Myers on his blog "Go Into The Story":

On writing

"Any time I get a little money that I can spend on myself,
I buy another typewriter and put it in another room and
start another project. It could be a novel, it could be
a poem I'm working on, it could be a translation,
it could be an essay, a literary criticism, it could be
a children's book, it could be a film script and it could be
whatever it is I'm interested in doing at the time.
And in a strange way the different projects kind of
cross-pollinate one another. It's very odd. Almost a
mystical process. You see something in one typewriter
that would be better off in another typewriter."

– James Dickey

------

Top Posts for 2009 on Valparaiso Poetry Review Blog

Edward Byrne's terrific essay on "The Last Lecture" of James Dickey in Number 4:

1. Inaugural Poem by Elizabeth Alexander
2. Elizabeth Alexander Comments on Her Inaugural Poem
3. John Ashbery, Pierre Martory, and Jackson Pollock
4. James Dickey’s Last Lecture: What It Means to Be a Poet
5. Rating Great Poets and Considering Contemporary Concerns
6. Sylvia Plath and Nicholas Hughes: Mother and Son
7. John Updike and John Cheever
8. John Ashbery Presentation at NBCC Ceremony
9. Craig Arnold, “Scrubbing Mussels,” and David Wojahn
10. W.S. Merwin Wins Pulitzer Prize in Poetry

This is the top of Ed's post:

“ . . . this will almost undoubtedly be my last class forever.”

James Dickey was born on this date (February 2) in 1923. Dickey’s reputation as a contemporary poet rose quickly to the highest levels in the early 1960s with publication of his first three volumes of poetry—Into the Stone (1960), Drowning with Others (1962), and Helmets (1964). About that third collection, Richard Howard later declared Dickey “as the telluric maker Wallace Stevens had called for in prophesying that the great poems of heaven and hell have been written and the great poem of the earth remains to be written (Alone with America: Atheneum, 1969).

However, in 1965 James Dickey produced Buckdancer’s Choice, winner of the National Book Award and one of the great collections of poetry of its time. In fact, this book, too often overlooked by recent readers of poetry, contains some of the more original and compelling poems to contribute to the body of contemporary American literature. Indeed, Dave Smith speaks of Dickey’s first decade of poetry in his book of criticism, Local Assays: On Contemporary American Poetry (University of Illinois Press, 1985), that it is “often as good as American poetry has gotten.”

In one of the three chapters concerning James Dickey in Unassigned Frequencies, Laurence Lieberman’s 1977 book of criticism on contemporary poetry, Lieberman describes the persona he finds in Dickey’s poems as “a unique human personality. He is a worldly mystic. On the one hand, a joyous, expansive personality—all candor, laughter, and charm—in love with his fully conscious gestures, the grace and surety of moves of his body. An outgoing man. An extrovert. On the other hand, a chosen man. A man who has been picked by some mysterious, intelligent agent in the universe to act out a secret destiny.”

Lieberman considers the major poems in Buckdancer’s Choice—such as “The Firebombing,” “The Fiend,” and “Slave Quarters”—as works in which “the conflict between the worldly-mindedness of modern life and the inner life of the spirit is dramatized.” Regarding Dickey’s fifth collection of poems, Falling (included in Poems 1957-1967), and its amazing title piece, Lieberman admires the poet’s “joy that’s incapable of self-pity or self-defeat. There is a profound inwardness in the poems, the inner self always celebrating its strange joy in solitude, or pouring outward, overflowing into the world. No matter how much suffering the poet envisions, the sensibility that informs and animates him is joy in the sheer pleasure of being.”

Anyone who met James Dickey may have encountered the poet’s “sheer pleasure of being.” His presence was felt whenever he entered a room, and his forceful personality certainly evoked various reactions, positive and negative, from those whom he engaged with his thoughts on poems, poets, poetics, and sometimes politics. In a chapter titled “James Dickey’s Motions” from Hunting Men: Reflections on a Life in American Poetry (LSU Press, 2006), Dave Smith explains that “Dickey cunningly and rightly counted on notoriety to carry his poetry to an audience usually indifferent to academic poems.” Additionally, his eagerness and ability to attract attention often led to instances of friction, controversy, and confrontation with a few fellow poets and critics, including an ongoing public feud with Robert Bly, especially during his difficult later years, much of which is chronicled in Henry Hart’s informative biography of Dickey, James Dickey: The World as a Lie (Picador, 2000) and Christopher Dickey’s more intimate and further insightful book about his father, Summer of Deliverance: A Memoir of Father and Son (Simon & Schuster, 1998). ... http://edwardbyrne.blogspot.com/2009/02/james-dickeys-last-lecture-what-it.html

This video clip, which Ed put on his site accompanying the post is interesting, but it is not nearly as strong as the audio from the last class. If there is enough interest from the public, I will post that here, too:

Another blogger discovers the novel "Deliverance"

"... I’ve finally read James Dickey’s (pause for juvenile snickers) classic.
Apparently the flick is the birthplace of the gay fan-base…
The book is an amazing look at American existentialism, before we truly embraced extreme everything.
I closed it with a feeling of loss building in me. We’ve become so desensitized that I’m not sure a man today could be made of stern enough stuff to be broken.... http://edgejammer.wordpress.com/2009/12/19/deliverance-not-a-gay-romp/

SOLDIER TO POET: An Exchange

As the son of a poet and the father of a lieutenant colonel, I read this exchange with great interest and, should the subject of James Dickey come up again, I'd be curious to know the colonel's thoughts on "The Firebombing." Back in 2003 I wrote a long essay about it because it struck me that the poem tried very hard to come to terms with the weird detachment that has come to characterize much of modern warfare. Anyone interested can Google "Firebombings: From My Father's Wars to Mine." The direct link to the pdf is http://www.strom.clemson.edu/events/calhoun/guests/dickey.pdf
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

From a recent blog review of "Deliverance" ...

"I bought the book because I heard there was a pretty gnarly sodomy scene but there turned out to be a really good book on both sides of it....."
http://www.deckfight.com/2009/12/favorite-reads-in-2009.html

Edward Byrne's Top 100 Books of Poetry

Edward Byrne has posted his top 100 books of 20th century American poetry, in alphabetical order by author, on his excellent blog for the Valparaiso Poetry Review, "One Poet's Notes":

1. A.R. Ammons: Collected Poems 1951-1971 (1971)
2. Rae Armantrout: Veil: New and Selected Poems (2001)
3. John Ashbery: Selected Poems (1985)
4. John Berryman: Collected Poems 1937-1971 (1988)
5. Linda Bierds: Flight: New and Selected Poems (2008)
6. Elizabeth Bishop: The Complete Poems, 1929-1979 (1983)
7. Robert Bly: Selected Poems (1986)
8. Louise Bogan: The Blue Estuaries: Poems 1923-1968 (1968)
9. David Bottoms: Armored Hearts: Selected and New Poems (1995)
10. Gwendolyn Brooks: Selected Poems (1999)
11. Amy Clampett: The Collected Poems (1993)
12. Lucille Clifton: Blessing the Boats: New and Selected Poems, 1988-2000 (2000)
13. Billy Collins: Sailing Alone Around the Room: New and Selected Poems (2001)
14. Hart Crane: The Poems of Hart Crane (1986)
15. Robert Creeley: Selected Poems (1991)
16. E.E. Cummings: Complete Poems: 1913-1962 (1972)
17. J.V. Cunningham: The Poems of J.V. Cunningham (1997)
18. James Dickey: The Whole Motion: Collected Poems, 1945-1992 (1992)
19. Mark Doty: Atlantis (1995)
20. Rita Dove: Selected Poems (1993)
21. Robert Duncan: Selected Poems (1997)
22. Stephen Dunn: New & Selected Poems: 1974-1994 (1994)
23. Richard Eberhart: Collected Poems, 1930-1986 (1988)
24. T.S. Eliot: Complete Poems and Plays (1952)
25. B.H. Fairchild: The Art of the Lathe (1998)
26. Lawrence Ferlinghetti: These Are My Rivers: New and Selected Poems, 1955-1993 (1993)
27. Edward Field: New and Selected Poems from the Book of My Life (1987)
28. Carolyn Forché: The Country Between Us (1981)
29. Robert Frost: Complete Poems of Robert Frost (1968)
30. Alice Fulton: Cascade Experiment: Selected Poems (2005)
31. Allen Ginsberg: Collected Poems: 1947-85 (1995)
32. Louise Glück: The First Four Books of Poems (1995)
33. Jorie Graham: The Dream of the Unified Field: Selected Poems 1974-1994 (1995)
34. Barbara Guest: Selected Poems (1995)
35. R.S. Gwynn: No Word of Farewell: Poems 1970-2000 (2001)
36. H.D. [Hilda Doolittle]: Collected Poems, 1912-1944 (1983)
37. John Haines: The Owl in the Mask of the Dreamer: Collected Poems (1993)
38. Joy Harjo: How We Became Human: New and Selected Poems 1975-2001 (2002)
39. Robert Hass: Field Guide (1973)
40. Robert Hayden: Collected Poems (1985)
41. Anthony Hecht: Collected Earlier Poems (1992)
42. Richard Hugo: Making Certain It Goes On: The Collected Poems of Richard Hugo (1984)
43. Mark Jarman: Unholy Sonnets (2000)
44. Randall Jarrell: Complete Poems (1968)
45. Donald Justice: New and Selected Poems (1995)
46. Weldon Kees: The Collected Poems of Weldon Kees (1975)
47. Galway Kinnell: A New Selected Poems (2000)
48. Carolyn Kizer: Cool, Calm and Collected: Poems 1960-2000 (2001)
49. Etheridge Knight: Born of a Woman: New and Selected Poems (1980)
50. Yusef Komunyakaa: Pleasure Dome: New and Collected Poems (2001)
51. Maxin Kumin: Selected Poems 1960-1990 (1997)
52. Denise Levertov: Selected Poems (2002)
53. Philip Levine: New Selected Poems (1992)
54. Larry Levis: The Selected Levis (2000)
55. Vachel Lindsay: Selected Poems of Vachel Lindsay (1963)
56. Audre Lorde: The Collected Poems of Audre Lorde (1997)
57. Amy Lowell: Complete Poetical Works (1955)
58. Robert Lowell: Collected Poems (2002)
59. Edgar Lee Masters: Spoon River Anthology (1916)
60. Walter McDonald: Blessings the Body Gave (1998)
61. Claude McKay: Selected Poems (1953)
62. James Merrill: Collected Poems (2001)
63. Thomas Merton: The Collected Poems of Thomas Merton (1979)
64. W.S. Merwin: Selected Poems (1988)
65. Edna St. Vincent Millay: The Selected Poetry of Edna St. Vincent Millay (2001)
66. Marianne Moore: The Complete Poems of Marianne Moore (1981)
67. Howard Nemerov: Trying Conclusions: New and Selected Poems, 1961-1991 (1991)
68. Frank O’Hara: The Collected Poems of Frank O’Hara (1995)
69. Sharon Olds: Strike Sparks: Selected Poems (2004)
70. Mary Oliver: New and Selected Poems (1992)
71. Charles Olson: The Collected Poems of Charles Olson (1987)
72. Robert Pinsky: The Figured Wheel: New and Collected Poems 1966-1996 (1996)
73. Sylvia Plath: The Collected Poems (1981)
74. Ezra Pound: The Cantos of Ezra Pound (1996)
75. John Crowe Ransom: Selected Poems (1945)
76. Kenneth Rexroth: The Complete Poems of Kenneth Rexroth (2002)
77. Adrienne Rich: The Fact of a Doorframe: Poems Selected and New, 1950-1984 (1984)
78. Edwin Arlington Robinson: Collected Poems (1937)
79. Theodore Roethke: Collected Poems (1966)
80. Muriel Rukeyser: Collected Poems (1978)
81. Carl Sandburg: Complete Poems (1970)
82. Anne Sexton: Selected Poems of Anne Sexton (1988)
83. Charles Simic: Selected Poems 1963-2003 (2004)
84. Louis Simpson: Collected Poems (1988)
85. Dave Smith: The Wick of Memory: New and Selected Poems, 1970-2000 (2000)
86. W.D. Snodgrass: Selected Poems, 1957-1987 (1987)
87. Gary Snyder: No Nature: New and Selected Poems (1992)
88. William Stafford: The Darkness Around Us Is Deep: Selected Poems of William Stafford (1993)
89. Gertrude Stein: Tender Buttons (1914)
90. Wallace Stevens: Collected Poetry and Prose (1997)
91. Mark Strand: Selected Poems (1990)
92. May Swenson: Nature: Poems Old and New (1994)
93. Allen Tate: Collected Poems, 1919-1976 (1977)
94. Mona Van Duyn: Selected Poems (2002)
95. Robert Penn Warren: The Collected Poems of Robert Penn Warren (1998)
96. Richard Wilbur: Collected Poems 1943-2004 (2004)
97. C.K. Williams: Selected Poems (1994)
98. William Carlos Williams: Collected Poems of William Carlos Williams (1986)
99. Charles Wright: Negative Blue: Selected Later Poems (2000)
100. James Wright: Above the River: The Complete Poems (1992)

The Bob Dylan - James Dickey - Donald Armstrong Link

What Bob Dylan and James Dickey had in common, it seems, was a fascination with the tragic, mythic death of Donald Armstrong, the reinvented World War II pilot beheaded in the Dickey poem "The Performance":

'James Dickey famously growled in a 1969 symposium about the "debased kind of music Bob Dylan and these people play." If you read the line in context, Dickey was more complaining about the decline of traditional southern country and folk music, an opinion that Dylan would likely have agreed with then and now. But whether James Dickey was a fan of Bob Dylan or not, it's probable that Dylan was a fan of his.'

http://www.dreamtimepodcast.com/2009/08/last-time-i-saw-donald-armstrong-bob.html

Chris talking with Charlie Rose about James: 1998

http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/4712

James Dickey, Beethoven and YouTube