JAMES DICKEY —continued poet" or as "the last person you would think of as a poet." And every time he sees these or similar statements, he gets furious. "What in the hell do they think a poet should be like. Is it too much for them to imagine that a poet should live a full life rather than hiding in a garret somewhere." Then he will lean forward and ask in his sternest tone, "What would they have thought of Lord Byron, I wonder?" In developing the thesis that good writing can be found everywhere, Dickey talked of sports writers, a group he admires very much. "Most of them are just frustrated poets," he said. "And when they are good they are better than most of us poets. Take Jim Murray of the Los Angeles Times, for example. He is one of the great ones. I remember a column of his a few years back when he was especially venomous about a defeat that the Los Angeles Rams suffered at the hands of the lowly San Francisco 49ers. And he wrote, 'Now who, dear fans, were the instruments of the defeat of our glorious Los Angeles Rams. Number one, there was John Brodie, a quarterback who is slower than fourth-class mail.' He went on to say that they tore large holes in the Rams line with two castoff halfbacks. 'You won't find their pictures on any bubble gum wrappers,' he said. This is the kind of sensibility that makes the connection. If Jim Murray wants to put down the Rams, he has the equipment to do it. He's got the metaphors—-fourth class mail, bubble gum wrappers, whatever he needs to do the job. The whole thing has to do with poetry. I used the word connect a few minutes ago and that really is a key word. To connect, through certain usage of the language. Whether it is Jim Murray or Furman Bisher or Jim Minter or Jesse Outlar, the sports columnists know how to connect—to make you see through words what is happening." This man Dickey has come a long, tortuous path to his present state of eminence. After graduation from North Fulton High School in Atlanta, he accepted a football scholarship to Clemson College because as he said, "Coach Howard was the only man to offer me one and then he told me I was big and relatively fast but worth no more than five dollars a week. I took him up on it." Dickey 8
I don't see why there has to I barrier between art and jo irn
played a year of freshman ball at Clemson and years later he was to dedicate a poem, "The Bee" to the coaches of Clemson College, 1942. The poem is an account of an attack on his young son by an insect and how it panicked the child into running in the direction of a nearby California freeway. Dickey, chasing after his boy, talks of bringing his old wingback skill back to life: "Long live what I badly did At Clemson and all of my clumsiest drives For the ball all of my trying to turn
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The corner downfield and my spindling explosions Through the five-hole over tackle. O backfield Coach Shag Norton, Tell me as you never yet have told me To get the lead out scream whatever will get The slow-motion of middle age off me I cannot Make it this way I will have to leave My feet They are gone I have him where He lives and down we go singing with scream into The dirt," The Georgia Tech Alumnus