He was literature in the South for a long time.”īottoms, 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. If you look over his life, in terms of national or international regard, nobody comes close.

“Everyone was measured against Dickey, and nobody came anywhere near him. “I think he was the best to come out of the South,” said David Bottoms, former Georgia poet laureate and Georgia State University professor. '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. Despite the novel's success, Dickey's poetry is considered the writer's greater artistic achievement. 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.ĭickey'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. 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.

'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.'' 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.

Deliverance dickey