James Dickey
James Dickey
James Lafayette Dickeywas an American poet and novelist. He was appointed the eighteenth United States Poet Laureate in 1966. He also received the Order of the South award. Dickey was also a novelist, known for Deliverancewhich was adapted into an acclaimed film of the same name...
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth2 February 1923
CityAtlanta, GA
want fever quiet
I want a fever, in poetry: a fever, and tranquillity.
fine hunches bounds
You are bound, my hunch is, to make it just fine.
life running long
To live a very long time... is supposed to be the desired object of all human life. But it is not. The main thing is to ride the flood tide... How glorious it is to create! For those few moments of a lifetime when the stream is running full and deep: those are the justification for everything.
tree rewards no-fear
Those that are huntedKnow this as their life,Their reward: to walkUnder such trees in full knowledgeOf what is in glory above them,And to feel no fear.
want failing willing
What I want is to be willing to fail rather than stagnate.
needs fifty sound
I need about one hundred fifty drafts of a poem to get it right, and fifty more to make it sound spontaneous.
storm lucky six
A poet trains himself to stand out in a storm and be struck by lightning. If he is lucky enough to be struck six times, he becomes immortal. Randall Jarrell said it and he's right.
occupation may poetry-is
Poetry is a hazardous occupation, very hazardous. There may be bad things in there inside you that maybe you can't handle.
fake body one-thing
The body is the one thing you can't fake; it's just got to be there.
towns sun come-up
I feel very happy to see the sun come up every day. I feel happy to be around. ... I like to take this day- any day-and go to town with it.
war modern destruction
So much destruction in modern war takes place miles and miles away from the source of the destruction, the human being who has caused it.
Find out what you do best, and then don't do it.
sex feelings intimacy
The true feeling of sex is that of a deep intimacy, but above all of a deep complicity....
writing dresses wells
If you write well, you don't have to dress funny.