Dickey, James Lafayette

▪ 1998

      American novelist and poet (b. Feb. 2, 1923, Atlanta, Ga.—d. Jan. 19, 1997, Columbia, S.C.), produced some 20 volumes of poetry combining themes of nature, religion, and history but perhaps was best known to the general public for his powerful novel Deliverance (1970), the story of a male-bonding canoe trip that ends in violence. For the 1972 motion picture of the same name, which was nominated for an Academy Award, he wrote the screenplay and appeared as a sheriff. Dickey attended Clemson (S.C.) College for a year before enlisting (1942) in the U.S. Army Air Forces; he served as a fighter-bomber pilot and flew over 100 missions in World War II, and at about that same time he began writing poetry. After the war he earned B.A. (1949) and M.A. (1950) degrees from Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tenn. Dickey returned to the military for service in the Korean War, was a university teacher and lecturer, and worked in advertising before publishing (1960) his first book of poems, Into the Stone. After spending the following year in Europe on a Guggenheim fellowship, he served as teacher and poet in residence at several colleges and universities and in 1968 finally settled at the University of South Carolina. During those years Dickey also produced such poetry collections as Drowning with Others (1962), Helmets (1964), and Buckdancer's Choice (1965), which won the 1966 National Book Award for poetry. From 1966 to 1968 he was poetry consultant to the Library of Congress. Later collections include The Zodiac (1976) and The Whole Motion (1992), and he published such notable nonfiction prose as Babel to Byzantium: Poets & Poetry Now (1968), the autobiographical Self-Interviews (1970), and Jericho: The South Beheld (1974) and the novels Alnilam (1987) and To the White Sea (1993). In 1977 Dickey was honoured with an invitation to read the poem "The Strength of Fields," which he wrote for the occasion, at the inauguration of Pres. Jimmy Carter.

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