James Dickey (Magill’s Survey of American Literature, Revised Edition)

Biography

James Lafayette Dickey was born on February 2, 1923, in Atlanta, son of Eugene Dickey, a lawyer, and Maibelle Swift Dickey. The Dickeys’ firstborn son, Eugene, died four years before James was born. Eugene's death from spinal meningitis at the age of six is the subject of Dickey's poem “The String,” in which the poet's guilt feelings appear in the refrain “Dead before I was born.”

Dickey was an excellent athlete who played football at North Fulton High School, from which he graduated in 1942. He then enrolled at Clemson Agricultural College in...

[The entire page is 6602 words long]

Join eNotes

The above is a free excerpt. Get total access to this content with the: