About James Dickey
James Dickey, (born February 2, 1923, in Atlanta, Georgia — died January 19, 1997, in Columbia, South Carolina), was an American author and poet best known for his novel Deliverance, published in 1970. From 1950 to 1954, he taught at Rice University in Houston, then returned to the Air Force for two years in Korea. He worked for several years in advertising, notably for Coca-Cola and Lay's potato chips. He justified this career change by the need for money, stating, “I was selling my soul to the devil every day... and trying to buy it back at night.”He returned to poetry in 1960 and published his first collection, Into the Stone and Other Poems. The following collection, Drowning with Others, published in 1962, earned him a Guggenheim Fellowship; and Buckdancer's Choice (1965) was awarded the National Book Award in 1966. After being appointed poetry consultant to the Library of Congress, he published “Poems 1957-1967”, which showcases the best of his work. He accepted a position as professor of English at the University of South Carolina at Columbia. He owes his popularity with the general public to John Boorman's film adaptation of his novel “Deliverance”, published in 1970 (in the 1972 film “Deliverance”, James Dickey appears at the end as the sheriff who questions the protagonists who participated in the river descent about the disappearance of their companions and local residents.
The poet was invited to read his poem “The Strength of Fields” before President Jimmy Carter at his inauguration on January 20, 1977. James Dickey died in 1977 at the age of 73, six days after his last lecture at the University of South Carolina, where he had taught since 1968. Dickey spent his last years in hospitals, suffering from pulmonary fibrosis, but also from alcoholism.
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What you have to realize when you write poetry, or if you love poetry, is that poetry is just naturally the greatest god damn thing that ever was in the whole universe.
