‘Complete Poems’ seeks deliverance for James Dickey

David Bottoms: "Years ago at his memorial service, I read 'Buckdancer's Choice.' His mother had angina, and the poem is about him standing outside her room, listening to her whistle an old guitar piece, even though it was painful for her. It's very life-affirming."

John Lane: "One of my favorites is called 'The Heaven of Animals.' He explains the idea of whether wild animals would have a heaven like the one we imagine humans do. In it, predators would be able to kill prey, and then the prey would come back to life to be killed again, over and over for all eternity. To me, it suggests Dickey was pushing his imagination into the space between humans and animals in a way no else does anymore."

Bronwen Dickey: "I usually like to read the barn-burners, like 'Cherrylog Road' and 'To the Last Wolverine.' The memories I have of him reading them are so wonderful, and I like to steal the ones that have the great last lines. 'Cherrylog Road' is a joyous poem about teenagers, and its last line is: 'continually / Drunk on the wind in my mouth, / Wringing the handlebar for speed, / Wild to be wreckage forever.'"

James Dickey’s headstone reads, “I move at the heart of the world,” a quotation from his poem “In the Tree House of the Night.” The marker at the All Saints Waccamaw graveyard at Pawley’s Island, S.C., also identifies the world-renowned author as a poet and father who lived from 1923 to 1997, but it doesn’t mention his most famous work. The only acknowledgement of Dickey’s bestselling novel “Deliverance” is a carving of a single eye, in the style of the book’s original cover.

Dickey's surviving family acceded to his wishes for the headstone to emphasize his career as a poet, which was overshadowed by the success of "Deliverance," particularly the 1972 film adaptation starring Jon Voight and Burt Reynolds as Atlanta city dwellers struggling for survival in the Georgia mountains. Despite the novel's success, Dickey's poetry is considered the writer's greater artistic achievement. "The Complete Poems of James Dickey," a recently published, 960-page volume from the University of South Carolina where Dickey taught for years, testifies to the power of his verse.

“I think he was the best to come out of the South,” said David Bottoms, former Georgia poet laureate and Georgia State University professor. “Everyone was measured against Dickey, and nobody came anywhere near him. If you look over his life, in terms of national or international regard, nobody comes close. NASA commissioned a poem from him. The NFL commissioned a poem from him. He was literature in the South for a long time.”

Bottoms, along with the late poet's daughter, journalist Bronwen Dickey, and Wofford College professor John Lane, a poet and environmental writer, will pay tribute to the quintessentially Southern author at "A Celebration of James Dickey," sponsored by the Georgia Center for the Book at the Decatur Library July 15. The event will include readings of Dickey's poems and a panel discussion moderated by the book's editor, Ward Briggs.

Born in Atlanta in 1923, Dickey led a life that easily lends itself to mythologizing, from his fondness for bow hunting to his participation in the firebombing of Tokyo during World War II. He wrote ad copy in the 1950s but worked on poetry in his off hours and famously remarked, “I was selling my soul to the devil all day… and trying to buy it back at night.”

He published his first collection of poetry, “Into the Stone and Other Poems,” in 1960 and continued to publish poetry at a prolific rate throughout the decade. He was widely honored for his poetry, but “Deliverance,” published in 1970, turned him into a celebrity, earning him visits to “The Tonight Show” with Johnny Carson and the invitation to write Jimmy Carter’s inaugural poem in 1977.

Unfortunately, Dickey was not suited to celebrity, said Bronwen.

“It was like giving celebrity to some teenager who went crazy with it. It literally cost him his life,” she said. “His public wanted the larger-than-life, exuberant James Dickey. When he stopped drinking, people would come up and give him drinks like a circus animal, because they wanted their Dickey story.”

She hopes “Complete Poems” will shift interest back to Dickey’s work and away from his public reputation.

“The Dickey stories around him eclipsed who he was as a person,” she said. “They’re so outlandish and out of control, it’s like the worst game of ‘Telephone’ in the history of literature. He was an exuberant, Rabelasian guy, but I’ve heard stories about him that he would never do. In the book, we have 331 poems that are real James Dickey stories. Whether or not they’re factually accurate, they show how he felt about his life.”

Briggs, a classics professor at the University of South Carolina, compiled and edited “The Collected Poems of James Dickey.” He admits that he only casually read the verse of his friend and USC colleague when Dickey was alive, but after the poet died in 1997 from lung disease, Briggs read his verse deeply and was highly impressed.

“It was really extraordinary. I think if I knew how great he was, I would’ve turned into a fawning acolyte around him, and Jim had no interest in people like that,” said Briggs.

Briggs started buying up old magazines and journals that printed his friend’s early work. “In 2003, it occurred to me that I had all the material I needed for this kind of book,” he said.

The book contains all the poems Dickey published in his lifetime, and Briggs describes the volume as a kind of testimony.

“Partly, it’s scholarly information: Where did the poems appear, how often were they reprinted and whether they changed between publications,” said Briggs. “I also wanted to bring together all the things Jim said about his poems and their origins. A lot of times he just made things up, so early on in the book we have a disclaimer about that. My goal was to bring together as many facts about his poetry as I could.”

Participants in the James Dickey celebration hope potential readers will rediscover his verse, even those intimidated by the idea of reading poetry. Briggs acknowledged that Dickey's more experimental work from late in his career had less success than his early poems, but adds, "Stick your finger somewhere in the middle of "Complete Poems," and you'll be fine."

Bottoms likes to quote from Robert Penn Warren, famed Southern poet and friend to Dickey. “Someone once asked him how to read poetry, and he said, ‘Slowly.’ That’s all you need. Go to his first four books — they’re dynamite. Read slowly and think about it. You don’t need any extra baggage. It’s all right there.”