Description: Over 400 letters that are as entertaining as they are erudite, revealing the fierce and complicated intellect of one of the most popular American poets and novelists of the 20th century. Written between 1943 and Dickey's death in 1997, most of them deal with literature, particularly poetry; the recipients include Robert Penn Warren, Ezra Pound, William Styron, Richard Wilbur, Stanley Burnshaw, Theodore Roethke, James Wright, John Berryman, Andrew Lytle, Denise Levertov, Peter Viereck, Philip Booth, Anne Sexton. Of particular interest are the apprenticeship letters in which the young poet develops contacts and shapes a career; and the late period in which the ailing man of letters confronts his guilt and debilitation as well as various family tragedies.

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