James Dickey [Choose a good topic for me if you can] - Research Paper Example

Dickey, in his early poems, described confrontations particularly in nature and war not as away of telling people his heroic past, but as an ingenious way for discouraging acts of aggression, mortality, and redefining good moral values. Instead of adopting formalism, Dickey favored a narrative approach typified with charged emotions drawn from his past experiences (Clabough 3-6). This paper aims to explore James Dickey. Specifically, the paper aims to explore his biography and how Dickey used things that happened in his own life in the stories, books, or poems that he wrote.

This paper will explore a number of novels and even poems to make the points clear. Mini-Biography Early years James Dickey was born on 2nd of February 1923 to Maibelle Swift and Eugene Dickey in Buckhead, Atlanta (Thesing and Wrede 1). He went to North Fulton High School and joined Clemson Agricultural College in 1942. He only spent one semester at Clemson Agricultural College before joining the US army. While in the army, he participated in the WWII and Korean War. The break in between the wars enabled him to enroll at Vanderbilt University to pursue courses in philosophy and English.

These qualifications landed him a new job as a lecturer at the University of Florida. Career Apart from serving in disciplined forces, Dickey lectured at Rice University in Texas and at the University of Florida. He also worked for McCann-Erickson, an advertising company as a copywriter. This introduced him to written art and it never took long before publishing his first book in 1960. More books on poetry were produced in the following years. His recognition as a great poet earned him another job as a Professor of English at the University of South Carolina around 1970.

Personal Life James Dickey married Maxine Syerson in 1948 and together they had two sons, Christopher and Kevin, before his wife passed on in 1976. A few years later, he married another wife by the name Deborah Dodson and together they had a daughter, Bronwen. Just like the father, Christopher and Bronwen are novelists and Kevin is a practicing radiologist. Before he died in 1997, Dickey was working as poet-in-residence at the University of South Carolina. He succumbed to problems associated with alcoholism, jaundice and fibrosis of the lungs.

Explaining the Thesis Dickey had an exceptional vision and in most cases he drew a lot from his life experience. In fact, most scholars who have reviewed his work were tempted to classify him as a confessional poet (Hill, para. 7-8). Every piece of work he published was motivated by a life experience. Dickey wrote about personal experiences, particular places, situations and memories. The distinctive poem of Dickey is one of reflection on experience or memory. Since, Dickey came from the South at a time when slave trade had not been abolished; his poems like "Slave Quarters" were developed around memories relating to places he visited.

In "Slave Quarters," the intention of Dickey was to deal with undisclosed moral issues-the guilt over slavery characterized by sexual abuse and killings. A similar style is captured in his poem, "The Firebombing." In "The Firebombing poem,” Dickey genuinely raised issues of consciousness, empathy, regret and lack of good will.