Literary figures/poets

Dickey died Sunday at the age of 73 from complications of lung disease. He was the author of the novel "Deliverance" and the screenplay for the movie of the same name. He said he wrote novels to pay the bills, but his first love was poetry. He wrote more than 20 collections of poetry. (REBROADCAST from 9/30/93)

Kenyon died Saturday of leukemia. She and her husband, poet Donald Hall, had both been struggling with cancer for years. Many of their works were inspired by their battles with the disease. Their last book of poems, entitled Constance, is about Hall's surgery and recovery. We replay our 1993 interview with the couple.

Merrill died Monday at age 68. The son of the founder of the Merrill Lynch brokerage house, Merrill traveled to Europe at age 24, a newly published poet "meaning to stay as long as possible". That was in 1950. His memoir "A Different Person" detailed his two and a half years there, and featured encounters with psychoanalysts, new and old lovers, and Alice Toklas. Merrill wrote eleven books of poems, and was the winner of two National Book Awards, the Bollingen Prize for Poetry, and the Pulitzer Prize. (Rebroadcast)