James Dickey - Poet - Lord, Let Me Die

hi Freddy my kimming way and F Gerald I mean they wrote you know about the time so much that you could almost take a history course by reading their work we want anything out of our culture I think going to come out of our literature if you're going to set out to make a pornographic movie uh the rule is this is only one rule is that is that the person will see the movie who who thinks that the movie will be a better fantasy than he than he himself can can come up with that's surprising on it he no but he said I would have marked you higher if you had known what you were talking about rationality is so easy you know oh but the things that a a great spouting Fountains of of human possibility of creativity are the things that are not rational that are that are slightly crazy or maybe a lot crazy you know uh it it could be said that Hitler uh proceeded on some such principle so he did so he did but so did sha so did Elliot so did Dylan Thomas so did Hart Crane end of sermon and you're sort of shy and you're sort of afraid of it because you think it doesn't belong to you because because maybe maybe Keat should have said this you know yeah buddy but he didn't I said right [Music] [Music] [Music] I have only one rule of thumb about anything I write when I think it might be good might it might be a disaster is is when I begin to say something that I had no notion that I knew this is probably what Plato meant by seizure inspiration or whatever that's as close as I've ever been able to get to it I mean no wonder write a cell that grandmother's down the river and divorce and get syphilis and end up in alcoholic Wards one thing and another I mean once having had that you know that there's not anything that you could do that would ever be so art Atlanta Chicago I tell you I think I better go with you I want you to go with you I don't like those other girls to the right there you sure yeah okay go ladies Sports where ladies Sports well I mean what sports are there for ladies beside oh no no no no no no no I don't mean that lady sports wear like you wear sportsare you can wear a suit you can wear sportsare I sell skirts and blouses and sweaters oh yeah jumpers things like that Sports very wide category yeah I can see or not in this business oh no that'd be the first thing I'd have to say I'm not what are you doing I'm a rider rider uh-huh yeah uh-huh that's very mysterious typeal I I write orders yeah get kind of writing yeah what what sort of writing do you do poetry poetry poetry that's a different line than I'm in yeah uh as as you said to me earlier I can see that you're not that line you're right you're right rney Phillips we got here okay glad to see you there it is now there's the old Skyline of Atlanta we have had several articles in the different newspapers around yeah I'm much ofes be sending them along and I try to send all of them when I get back and when this week gets over with I have more time all together on this issue and this event I think we've had about eight or nine articles and a lot of excitement I've had about 50 uh more phone calls in the last two days about it they're very good people that know you people that want to very good well there going to be a lot of people there now what we we're talking about 11:00 now what is that I mean I mean some kind of mysterious thing I'm supposed to address somebody but I'm just going to give I'm just going to read read some things is that is that all right because I have no I don't have any speech or talk on the metaphysics of modern poetry anything like I think most of most of uh the life of a Wandering bar in these days is has spent on strange highways with neat green signs that that have in explicable names on them these have explicable names because I I grew up knowing where they were I have some things too that I write okay well I'm I make time to look at I got have something Le really been so excited about this haven't been able to study or eat you shouldn't do the things that you us when you get on a college campus there are two groups of people that that you can sort of see them separate as they're in the crowd backward and backward it seemed to me as if you were simply making an attempt to go inward the one group wants to use the poet as a pretext for something for something uh it's not a whole way of life the other other other groping kids who think that human expression is possible I mean you you sort of naturally gravitate to one or the other this is a very significant day in the life of decab college as a cultural and literary center it's significant because the presence of Mr Dicky it's also significant because we have been recognized by both the mayor of the city of Atlanta uh when I began to write poetry uh and sort of syruptitious to send out upon to a joural of some sort you know that could have been no less promising vocation I mean it it was it was so unpromising that it was ludicrous furiously held L lously above his head like an among the insurance salesman and owners of chain grocery stores to be an American poet there was nothing though I mean how how how absurd can you get I mean [Music] buddy when you go to these schools now and thousands of kids want to listen to what you say why I mean why should I mean what have I got to say that's all that important and he is a poet and he is a man and I would like to present Mr James Dicky and yet uh the president of the school introduces you you step up there and you have adage and why not you come back to a HomeTown like Buckhead uh years and years later you remember what it was like then you wonder if any of the same fellas are still around to some people to say some people like myself it becomes obsessive to you that you find one person that you knew just one or who would recognize you otherwise you're just going around like a ghost bit and they don't seem to age too much but I'm sure when someone comes up and looks at me and they haven't seen me in 20 years they say my gosh he he's really a they don't say that to you but as a matter of fact no no so this is this is about that uh this is called looking for the Buckhead boys some of the time going home I go blind and can't find it the house I lived in growing up and out the doors of high school is torn down and cleared away for further development but that does not stop me first in the heart of my blind spot are the B Buckhead boys if I can find them even one I'm home and if I can find him catch him in or around Buckhead I'll never die it's likely my youth will walk inside me like a king first of all going home I must go to wer and Robert's drugstore for driving through I saw it shining renewed renewed in chromium but still there it's one of the places the buck boys used to be before beer turned teenager Tommy Nichols is not there the drugstore is full of women made of Cosmetics Tommy Nichols has never been in such a place he was the number two man on the mile relay team in his day what day my day well was I number three and there are some sunlet pictures in the Book of the Dead to prove it the 1939 North Fulton High School annual go down go down to tyres pool hall for there was more concentration of the spirit of the Buckhead Boys in there than anywhere else in the world do I want some shoes to walk all over Buckhead like a king nobody knows well I can get them at tyres it's a shoe store now I could tell you where every spitoon ought to be standing Charlie Gates used to say one of these days I'm going to get myself the reputation of being the bravest man in Buckhead I'm going in tyree's toilet and pull down my pants and take a [ __ ] maybe Charlie's the key the man who would say that would never leave bookhead where is he maybe I ought to look up some old Merchants why didn't I think of that before Lord Lord like a king Hardware Hardware at Hardware Merchants never die and they have everything on hand there is to know somewhere in the wood screws Mr Hami may have my prodigal crown on sale he showed up for every football game at home or away in the hills of North Georgia there he is as old as ever Mr remember me God Almighty ain't you the one who fumbled a punt and lost the Russell game that's right how them butter fangers still butter I say still fumbling but what about the rest of the team what about Charlie Gates he the boy that got lime in his eye from the goal line when y'all played Gainesville right I don't know seems to me I see see see what does Charlie Gates see in his eye burning with the go line does he see a middle-aged man from The Book of the Dead looking for him in Magic shoes from tyree's disappeared pool hole Mr Hami Mr Hami where where is mon black paralyzed doct can't do nothing where is Dick Shay assistant sales manager of craft cheese how about punchie Henderson died of a heart attack watching High School football in South Carolina old punchie the last of the wind sprinters and now for no reason the first of the heart attacks Harmon Quigley he's up at County Work Farm 16 doing all right up there be out next year didn't anybody get to be a doctor a lawyer sure Bobby L is a chiropractor he he's right out here at Bolton got a real good business Jack ciper moved away Gordon ham dead in the war oh The Book of the Dead and the dead bright sun on the page where the TEAM stands ready to explode in all directions with time did you say you see Charlie Gates every now and then seems to me well he may be out on at the Gulf Station between here and Sandy Springs let me go pull my car out of the parking lot in back of wendon Roberts do I need gas no let me drive around the block let me drive around Buckhead a few dozen times turning turning in my foreign car till the town spins whirls till the Chrome vanishes from wind and rabbits the spons are remade from the Sun itself the dead Pages flutter the hearts rise up that lie in the ground and Bobby laster's back breaking fingers pick up a stick Tommy Nichols and I rack the balls and Charlie Gates walks into tyree's unimaginable toilet I go north now and I can use 50 cents worth of gas it is Gul I pull in and praise the Lord Charlie Gates comes out his blue shirt dazzles like a Baton Pass he Squints he looks at me through the go line Charlie Charlie we have won away from we have won at home in the last minute can you see me you say what I say where in God Almighty have you been all this time I don't know Charlie I don't know but I've come to tell you a secret that has to be put into code understand when I mean what I mean when I say to the one man who came back alive from the book of the dead to the bravest man in Buckhead to the lime eyed ghost blue wavering in the fumes of good Gulf gas fill her up with wine light heart attack blood the contents of tyres toilet the beer of teenage Sons no just fill her up fill her up Charlie the first draft to me is not sacran at all all I'm seeking from that is a possible Direction uh and uh after I take it through say sometimes 150 drafts the last uh the last the final version has no relation whatever no discernable relation to what I started with of your PO you worked over that many times yes yes it's worked over to get the worked on quality out of it that's a rather rough way of writing yeah it is rough and takes a long time but it's the best way that I've found to do it uh you said uh that you couldn't be a fixed hour man anymore because you're hustling about too much um do you have to hustle about yes I like to get around a lot uh to begin with there's an awful lot of money in it uh and uh you get to see people that you otherwise wouldn't wouldn't see and and in the back of your mind there is the Perhaps Perhaps uh misconceived idea that you're doing your profession poetry some good some people say that you know this is a technical thing like an essay or a short story or something like this and then to other people poetry is like a religion to them in a way like something holy and Untouchable uh poetry really is nothing nothing um more or less than a man or a person trying to say something IM immortally you know something that what is it Milton says that succeeding Generations will not willingly Let Die uh maybe they will probably they will but he's he's trying to say it as memorably as he can in his own way how do you valuate Rod mckuin next to someone like yourself not possible well they are both trying to say something Immortal how do you teach that uh I don't know how you teach it I mean I think the language sense uh the sense of height Lang a heightened and more memorable language uh is either overt or latent in everybody uh I like I like speech rhythms very much myself uh because it seems to they seem to give a a note of often antic to the poem that a more artificial language wouldn't give uh and people now are so desperate for honesty honesty of tone honesty of feeling honesty of statement of diction and so on that uh they uh they have gone away from that in favor of something that is more humanly convincing what motivates me to to write a particular poem in the beginning is that something flashes into my mind and I say Jesus wouldn't that be terrific now suppose I did this with it and I'm in it it's gotten me yeah is that sense of survival that you have keep you from thinking that the world right now is a very depressing place in which it is it is a very depressing place but that the fact that it's depressing and that we have a lot of Social and international troubles and so on doesn't doesn't keep the world from being the most glorious thing ever conceived [Music] now the forecast for cap cut in the islands from the US weather VI in Boston mostly fair today with the temperatures in the upper 30s to the lower 40s fair and cold I think there are other things more important than than literary Excellence the standard is what is said to be literary Excellence uh and I think that's a very short string I mean wsw worth for example he's not so good really you know all these great stuffed goats uh of English literature Milton uh you have to Accord him some kind of stature but um college professor spend their lives on exes or whatever the hell the word is on of Milton's tragedy and so on which is some of it is is remarkable in a way but it doesn't matter really I mean who cares about Paradise Lost I mean really who cares about it I was subed to reading that in high school and that was a thing that turned me off poetry uh in in other words one one is forced to read Milton at North filon County High School you know uh if they say to you this is poetry then you say I can sure live without that you know because the world is there I mean the world is out there and Milton has nothing to do with it uh he's not saying anything to me it's only an official Masterpiece and there's no greater disaster can I ask you a question about another kind of ideal do you think people expect poets to do the agonizing for them what do you think of Lenny Bruce why do people get satisfaction out of Dylan Thomas drinking himself to death how do you feel about the quote liberated woman oh my uh the liberated woman uh well well then how do you feel about the unquote liberated woman again I'm not a woman how do you feel about it I mean would you you haven't really lived in the in the age of the unliberated woman and where the woman was protected and as they say cherished and I've seen enough marriages where the the woman is insisted on her individuality uh and uh refuses to do the things that women have always done because she considers that a badge of her subservience uh to to men the the endless wrangling about who's going to cook supper and and endless wrangling about money but like right now like I'm going through school and I'm going to go into a profession and when I get married you think I can stop all that you seem like you're uh very concerned with uh the extinction of animals but then well all right tomorrow you're going out on a Hunting Expedition yeah that does seem par paradoxical I admit but uh they the odds are all on the side of the animal I can safely assure you but hunting hunting with archery hunting is really is not an attempt to exterminate all deal I mean it's really part of the it could be looked on as it should be looked on as part of the ecology no get them inside i' have to be off of B before I take that like no other generation of men I suppose our our our generation and our time is haunted by Extinction and I think we have an indication of what is very is quite likely to happen to us in the extinction of any animal species uh anyway this is about that for the last Wolverine they will soon be down to one but he still will be for a little while still will be stopping the flakes in the air with a look surrounding himself with the Silence of whitening snars let him eat the the last Red meal of the condemned to Extinction tearing the guts from an elk yet that is not enough for me I would have him eat the heart and from it have an idea stream into his knowing head that he no longer has a thing to lose and so can walk out into the open in the full pale of the subarctic son for a single spruce tree is dying higher and higher let him climb at with all his meanness and strength Lord we have come to the end of this kind of vision of Heaven as the sky breaks open its fans around him and shimmers and into its northern Gates he rises snarling complete in the joy of a weasel with an elk's horned heart in his stomach looking straight into the Eternal blue where he hauled his kind I would have it all my way at the top of that tree I plac the new World's Last eagle punched in mangy feathers giving up on the theory of flight dear God of the wildness of poetry let them mate to the death and the rotten branches let the trees Sway and burst into flame and mingle them crackling with feathers and Crown fire let something come of it something gigantic legendary rise Beyond Reason over Hills of ice screaming that it cannot die that it has come back this time on wing and will spare no earthly thing that it will hover made purely of Northern Lights at dusk and fall on men building roads will perch on the moose's horn like a falcon riding into battle into a holy war against screaming railroad Crews will pull whole trap lines like fibers from the snow in the long jawed night of fur Trappers but small filthy unwinged you will soon be crouching alone with maybe some dim racial notion of being the last but none of how much your unnoticed going will mean how much the timid poem needs the Mindless explosion of your rage the Glutton internal fire the Elk's heart and the belly sprouting Wings the packed of the blind swallowing thing with himself to eat the world and not to be driven off it until it is gone even if it takes forever I take you as you are and make of you what I will skunk bear CaRu bloodthirsty nons Survivor Lord let me die but not die out well maybe next year we'll get them huh you by we GA around all Crown Let [Music] Me You Got to Hide Your [Music] Love You Got to [Music] Hide go ahead now [Music] hey buddy you don't sound like you're from New York uh listen believe me I'm not well I come from South Carolina South Carolina yeah you come down in business or what well yeah sort of business what kind of business you in h you don't mind me asking it no no don't I know I'm I'm a writer I have to talk to editors and other folks R do you do uh well I write uh poetry and uh I got a novel coming out and do some criticism and one thing and another you ever um I don't know what have you read lately I mean I'd be interested to know what what people read I be Classics what Classics comic Classics comic classics all right you made it anything special anything on specific thing or well I try to I try to tell what it's like to be alive in on the on the planet you know you have that feeling uh being very lucky to be around times yeah that's that's all it's really don't really don't miss to it so I don't think I've ever asked anyone this but I'm always asked it when I give a reading and it's who do you write for they asked me the same thing and I have I have that's that's one of the things that I have unequivocally clear on uh I write for my for my own sensibility my own scheme of things because uh there doesn't seem to be any way for me to do it other than that it's rather small thing almost like growing Garden you know how Gardens are made but you just make it for its own Symmetry and so forth yeah right you're not you're not competing in a flower show and you don't want it to be televised for millions of people and it's qu I guess we call a craft something you can do until you fall into sity art is what you can't do yet it has an element of craftsmanship yes it's an element but but but the craftsmanship is only to to give some kind of frame of reference to this random thing this random idea something that you think if you could find the form for it and the words for it would make a new Heaven and a new Earth I mean people would see they would break through this kind of glass wall that we all live behind and we would really I mean have you you know the most heartbreaking of all dreams I'll tell you I'll tell you what mine is and i' I've dreamed it maybe three times in my life and I hope I die dreaming it it's so obsessive with me that I that I that I talk about it around home with maxi and Chris and Kevin my little boy and so on which I call the legend of the happy swimming pool and I'm somewhere in the neighborhood where I grew up in Atlanta and I go down the street that I've never never been on before I mean there there was no reason ever to go there and as was a mile of swimming pool these lovely girls you know who are crazy about me I me and and and and there's this sense of where have you been you know we've been waiting for you all these years that that's that's what then do they recede no I wake up you wake up you you receive I Reed yeah I reive no that's sad you you know this feeling there that there's something in your life that you could all you have to do is turn a corner or open a door and and it will all be so I don't fear the nightmare I can take any nightmare uh I fear the dream which is good which which has the reality that we can't achieve in reality I don't feel the nightmare uh I I feel those those tears of of loss and deprivation uh when you have the when you at the happy swimming pool which is kind of like eeden you see for a few minutes of of of of of one Anonymous Suburban night uh and and and is forever gone you know uh I fear the end of the happy dream I have a flight of fancy that um you know the other dream which is the most horrible to me I haven't had it often and haven't had it in late years but I used to and it's the dream where you've done something and as the dream goes on you're not quite sure but you know you've done it and everything you do makes it worse and it's something you've done to somebody or another form of something wrinkled that you try to smooth and gets more and more wrinkled yes yes and I'd say everyone does a kind of art it's impossible to live INF dooodle it's kind of low art and uh but our claims to have yeah um profundity of feeling or thought and Grace of craftsmanship which in that way it's Superior to all the little Arts that people practice what what it does have I mean in this kind of rare instances what art does poetry you and I have given our lives to it and we'll give the rest of our lives to it at least in some way uh is that it has a life enhancing quality to it it makes the terror more terrible uh and the love more love and it essentially operates in the realm of values uh what one puts store by if it hadn't been for poetry I'd have been a high school football coach in South car I feel the same way it's been my vocation in love I I silly thing that went through my mind s talking miserable the man who's never tried to write a b fug yes it do [Music] is [Music] I think that people undervalue themselves undervalue themselves there's no glory uh that's a word that people would rather die than utter is glorious you know or splendor splendor who has ever seen any Splendor really you know one must minimize minimize we sort of belong to the all come off it generation you know if you said I walked out and I looked at the sun coming up and it just came it was inevitable you know yeah your buddy would probably say to you all come off it what's the matter with you but I don't want to come off it I want to get on it really I [Music]