James Dickey (1923–1997) is one of the great American poets of the twentieth century. After working in the advertising industry and teaching at several colleges and universities, Dickey received a National Book Award for Buckdancer's Choice in 1966 and served as poetry consultant to the Library of Congress, a position that later became poet laureate, from 1966 to 1968. He then joined the University of South Carolina English faculty and served as poet in residence until his death. He became a member of the National Institute of Arts and Letters in 1972 and was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1987.
Ward Briggs is Carolina Distinguished Professor of Classics Emeritus and Louis Fry Scudder Professor of Humanities Emeritus at the University of South Carolina, USA. He has published widely on the history of American classical scholarship, the career of the classicist Basil Lanneau Gildersleeve, and the classical tradition. He was a friend of James Dickey for more than thirty years.
