James Lafayette Dickey, III was born in the town of Atlanta, Georgia on February 2, 1923. His parents were Maibelle and Eugene Dickey. He went to Ed S. Cook Elementary School and North Fulton High School as a kid, both of which are in Atlanta. He was athletic as a child. He played football and track, but his football career led him to a scholarship at the University of Clemson, in Clemson, South Carolina. But, before he went off to college he spent one year at the Darlington School in Rome, Georgia for one year in preparation for a college. He didn't last longer than a year in Clemson though because he enlisted into the Army Air Corps.

He served in WWII as a flight radar observer and navigator. After serving in the army he went to school at Vanderbilt University in Tennessee. He went there on the G. I. Bill. After graduating from Vanderbilt with a M. A. in English, he started to teach. He taught first at the Rice Ins

He left Florida and made his way up to New York to work as an advertising copywriter. Not liking this job, he left it after only five years. He soon received another fellowship (Guggenheim Fellowship) which took him and his family to Europe. After returning from this fellowship he became Poet-in-Residence at Reed College in Portland, Oregon. He stayed there for only a year, when he then becomes Poet-in-Residence at San Fernando Valley State College, in Northbridge, California. He returned to teaching in 1965 at University of Wisconsin, in Milwaukee. He only taught there for a year because he becomes Poet-in-Residence at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. He received a high honor that only a few poets get when he becomes Consultant in Poetry at the Library of Congress or Poet Laurate until 1968. He was then named Poet-in-Residence and First Carolina Professor of English, at the University of South Carolina, Columbia. He was then given the honor of the induction into the 50-member American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters on May 18th, 1988. He was assigned Chair #15, previously occupied by novelist John Steinbeck. In 1994 he was hospitalized with jaundice (yellowish pigmentation of the skin, tissues, and body fluids caused by the deposition of bile pigments). In 1996 he was afflicted with fibrosis of the lungs. In 1997 he taught his last class at USC January 14. He then died January 19, 1997. In his lifetime he had received 9 awards, and has received many honors ranging from graduating Magna Cum Laude at Vanderbilt all the way to being a Poet Laurate for the United States. James was married twice; his first wife was Maxine he meet while he was attending Vanderbilt University. Then his second wife Deborah Dodson he married after Maxine died. James has two sons and a daughter. He had wrote more than 20 books, some include; 'Poems 1947-1967' published in 1967, 'The Zodiac' (1976), and 'The Whole Motion' (1992).

I picked two poems of James Dickey's to analyze, the first one is called 'Sled Burial, Dream Ceremony'. This poem is about a dead Southerner that is being brought to the North for his burial. When he arrives on a train it is snowing. He is taken off the train by a group of men and women. The casket is open and one man sticks his hand inside and places the Southerner's hand over his heart. They load him up on a sled drawn by horses. They pull him through town where they pass bushes, barns, and houses with kids looking out the window crying. They take him past some ice fishing houses and stop in the middle of a large frozen body of water. They cut out of the lake, a piece of ice as large as the casket. They place him in the water with the casket still open. A

Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1837
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page double spaced)