Book details

Book description

James Dickey: The Selected Poems is the first book to collect James Dickey's very best poems. Like many visionary poets of the ecstatic imagination, Dickey experimented in a wide variety of literary styles. This volume brings together the finest work from each of the periods in Dickey's extremely controversial career. For over three decades, until his death in 1997, Dickey was one of the nation's most important poets; these are the poems that brought him a popular readership and critical acclaim. JAMES DICKEY, born in Atlanta in 1923, is most widely known as the author of the novel and screenplay Deliverance. He is also the author of several other novels and fifteen books of poetry. His many honors include the National Book Award and a Melville Cane Award for Buckdancer's Choice (1965). He was invited to read at President Carter's inauguration in 1977, and most recently served as Judge of the prestigious Yale Younger Poets series. He died in 1997 in South Carolina.

ROBERT KIRSCHTEN is the author of James Dickey and the Gentle Ecstasy of the Earth: A Reading of the Poems (1988) and "Approaching Prayer": Ritual and the Shape of Myth in A. R. Ammons and James Dickey (1998) and the editor of Struggling for Wings: The Art of James Dickey (1997) and Critical Essays on James Dickey (1994). He teaches English at Ohio State University.