James Dickey - Crux

James Dickey

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James Dickey was a great poet, a legendof the reading circuit, andafter the best-sellingDeliverance and its celebrated movie versionacelebrity. This rich collection, reaching from 1943 tohis death in 1997, and from a fledgling poet to an ailingman of letters, constitutes a vibrant short course inliterature and poetry since World War II.

From a 1959 letter: For a long time I have beentrying to do two things in poetry, both of which I havebeen told I should not do. The first is to get away,by whatever means, from the idea of a poem as obietchart.... The other is to be able to make statements,one after the other: this happens, this happens, thenthis happens. To go with all this, I have also been tryingto assert connections in nature where none exist: tomake the world do what I say, rather than what itactually does.

Matthew J. Bruccoli, fames Dickeys literary personal representative, notes in his introduction: Theletters assembled in this volume represent perhapstwenty percent of fames Dickeys located correspondence. The double rationale for selection was first todocument the growth of a major writerhow a scarcelyeducated jock discovered that he possessed genius andthat writing was the only thing that countedthen,second, to document the ways he fulfilled his geniusand advanced his career.... The best letters here are theones about writing ... his correspondence documentsthe accuracy of his critical judgments.

Dickeys correspondents include John Berryman,Flarold Bloom, Philip Booth, Richard Howard, DeniseLevertov, Robert Lowell, Donald Hall, fames Merrill,Ezra Pound, Anne Sexton, Mark Strand, Robert PennWarren, Richard Wilbur, and fames Wright.

Entertaining and erudite, these letters reveal thefierce, complicated literary intellect of the man fohnUpdike called the high-flyer of American poets.

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Digitized by the Internet Archivein 2017 with funding fromKahle/Austin Foundation

https://archive.org/details/cruxlettersofjamOOdick

Dickey at the time of Deliverance

THE LETTERS OFJAMES DICKEY

MATTHEW J. BRUCCOLI AND

JUDITH S. BAUGHMAN, EDITORS

This book is dedicated to James Dickeys friend,

STANLEY BURNSHAW.

\

o

Crux n. A constellation in the Southern Hemisphere near Centau-rus and Musca. Also called the Southern Cross.

A difficult problem or unanswered question.

The title of the unfinished novel James Dickey was writing at hisdeath.

List of Illustrations xi

Acknowledgments xiii

Editorial Plan xvii

Introduction xxi

Chronology xxv

PART ONE

Beginnings: Air Force and Vanderbilt

May 1943-October 1951 1

PART TWO

Apprenticeship

August 1953-March 1956 53

PART THREE

Advertising and Moonlighting

April 1956-May 1961 97

PART FOUR

Poet and Teacher

July 1961-August 1964 175

PART FIVE

Midstream

September 1964-June 1968 231

part six

University of South Carolina and Deliverance

September 1968-June 1970 277

PART SEVEN

Celebrity

July 1970-November 1980 343

PART EIGHT

Man of Letters

January 1981-August 1988 399

PART NINE

The Last Wolverine

September 1988-November 1996 451

Notes 515

Index 559

Dickey at the time of Deliverance

(photograph by Christopher Dickey) facing half title

Air Cadet Dickey in 1943 2

Maxine Syerson Dickey aboard the United States, 1933

(photograph courtesy of Christopher Dickey) 52

Kevin, Maxine, and Christopher Dickey, c. i960 96

James, Kevin, and Christopher Dickey, c. i960 96

James Dickey, c. 1959 (photograph by Timothy Galfas) 174

Barnstorming for poetry 230

Dickey moderating a 4 March 1968 Library of Congress reading and

discussion by Reynolds Price and John Cheever 232

Winners of National Book Awards for works published in 1963:

Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., Janet Flanner, Katherine Anne Porter,

and Dickey. Mayor John Lindsay of New York City is in the center. 232

Teaching a class at the University of South Carolina, 1969 276

Early 1970s: Dickey was an enthusiastic archer and guitar player.

(top photograph by Jerry D. Robertson) 278

Dickey as the sheriff confronting Jon Voight as Ed Gentry in the

movie version of Deliverance (1972) 342

William Styron and Dickey meeting with a class at the

University of South Carolina in 1974 342

Deborah Dodson Dickey, Bronwen Elaine Dickey, and James Dickey,

May 1981 (Courtesy of Thomas Cooper Library,