The gamecock. (Columbia, S.C.) 1908-2006, January 31, 1997, Garnet and Black, Page 7, Image 15
fareWelL
By Stephanie Sonnenfeld
Special to G&B
I was lucky enough to meet James
Dickey three times in my life.
The first time wasn't very personal,
but still contained a bit of
excitement. He was signing books
at Oxford Bookstore in Atlanta.
Two friends and I made the 20minute
trek from our hometown of
Marietta, Ga., to Atlanta to see
Dickey.
To us, getting to simply see
Dickey was a treat. He was a real
live author; one who lived a life we
simply read about in textbooks and
heard about in English class.
We were rushed through a quick
book-signing, where we were
allowed to say hello to Dickey, but
nothing more. We were just three
out of a few hundred who had come
to see him.
The second and third times I met
Dickey was here at USU. lwenty
some odd days into my freshman
year, I was invited by Don Greiner
(then an English professor, now
interim provost) to have lunch
with Mr. Dickey and Ben Franklin,
another USC English professor.
The three of them had been dining
every Tuesday and Thursday for
more than 13 years at USC's
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Faculty House. There they discussed
everything from golf to
Goethe to Mozart.
Every so often, a "mystery guest"
was invited to join the three for
lunch.
In the fall of 1994, I went to
lunch as a mystery guest. We sat by
a cement fountain outside next to
the Faculty House on a gray
September day.
When Mr. Dickey arrived, he was
just what I expected him to be: he
was confident, wildly intelligent, a
bit racy and ready to shock
whomever and whatever was
around. He impressed me; he made
me laugh; he made me feel completely
at ease.
That day, he asked me where I
was originally from and I told him
Marietta, Ga. He smiled when I
told him. Since he was a native of
Atlanta, he knew where Marietta
was. He asked me how the town
square was and told me a few stories
about Marietta.
I told him how I loved his poem
"Hunting Civil War Relics at
Niblewell Creek" because it
reminded me of searching the dirty
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could never imagine. Dickey told
me how he'd gone to Kennesaw
when he lived in Atlanta and how
he knew exactly what I was speaking
of.
For a freshman away from home
for the first time and entirely homesick,
Mr. Dickey did a wonderful
job of reminding me what I left
behind, and he made me remember
it fondly, not sadly.
The second time I dined with Mr.
Dickey was in 1995.
This time, we talked of writers I
liked, and he told me about writers
he liked. He also told me stories
about writers who were his friends.
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Flannery O'Connor used to sit on
her front porch in Milledgeville,
Ga., and watch her peacocks walk
around the front yard as the mystical
sun took its nightly setting. He
told me about teaching Pat Conroy
and knowing Anne Sexton.
Now that Dickey is gone, I know
he'll be remembered for his novel
Deliverance and his numerous works
of poetry. He'll be known for the
awards he won and the visions he
verbally created.
But I prefer to remember the
Dickey who sat on the porch with
Flannery O'Connor, watching the
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sun set in the Georgia sky; the
Dickey who searched for Civil War
bullets and uniform buttons in the
red Georgia clay; the Dickey who
made me laugh; and the Dickey
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James Dickey
who made me appreciate the mere
beauty of a couple of words he simply
placed by each other's side.
That's how I remember James
Dickey.
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Garnet & Black, January 31, 1997 7