Dickey, James [Lafayette]
Dickey, James [Lafayette]( 1923– ),Georgia-born poet, on the faculty of the University of South Carolina (1969– ). His first volumes of poetry, Into the Stone (1960), Drowning with Others (1962), Helmets (1964), and Buckdancer's Choice (1965, National Book Award), were the sources from which he selected his Poems (1967). The last of the four separate volumes contained The Firebombing, disputed as a major poem but with divergent conceptions of Dickey's treatment of the destruction of a city by atomic bombing from the air. In the same year that he issued his next volume of poetry, The Eye-Beaters, Blood, Victory, Madness, Buckhead and Mercy (1970), he also published a novel, Deliverance. A thrilling adventure story about four Georgia businessmen going by canoe down a rugged river on a hunting trip and fighting for their lives against the wilderness and malevolent mountaineers, it became...
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