America’s Byron

If you asked 10 Americans, “Who was James Dickey?,” my guess is that half would shrug, four would identify him as the author of the novel and movie Deliverance, and the tenth might venture, “Didn’t he read a poem at Jimmy Carter’s inauguration?” or “Wasn’t he our poet laureate back in the 1960s?” My theoretical estimate would, I think, depress James Dickey, born 100 years ago this February 2, for he wanted above all else to be remembered as a poet. He was the victim of his own success (and excess), having pulled off the neat trick of eclipsing his fame as arguably America’s greatest living poet with a novel about four buddies on a canoe trip that turns very, very weird. (“Squeal like a pig!”)