James Dickey

Born 2 February 1923 · Died 19 January 1997

James Lafayette Dickey was an American poet and novelist. He was appointed the eighteenth United States Poet Laureate in 1966.

Quotes

“I decided that survival was not in the rivets and the metal, and not in the double-sealed doors and not in the marbles of Chinese checkers. It was in me. It came down to the man, and what he could do. The body is the one thing you can't fake; it's just got to be there.”
Deliverance
“I had the feeling that if it were perfectly quiet, if I could hear nothing, I would never wake up. Something in the world had to pull me back, for every night I went down deep, and if I had any sensation during sleep, it was of going deeper and deeper, trying to reach a point, a line or border.”
Deliverance
“Here they are. The soft eyes open. / If they have lived in a wood / It is a wood. / If they have lived on plains / It is grass rolling / Under their feet forever.”
The Whole Motion; Collected Poems, 1945-1992
“Those that are hunted / Know this as their life, / Their reward: to walk / Under such trees in full knowledge / Of what is in glory above them, / And to feel no fear.”
The Whole Motion; Collected Poems, 1945-1992
“Drunk on the wind in my mouth, / Wringing the handlebar for speed, / Wild to be wreckage forever.”
The Whole Motion; Collected Poems, 1945-1992

Quotes from Wikiquote (CC BY-SA 4.0), chosen with AI.

Books by James Dickey in order

Books by James Dickey in the order they were published, from Drowning With Others (1962) to Drowning with Others; Poems (2021).