James Dickey Biography

James Dickey

Though considered one of the country's most respected poets, Dickey is best remembered for his novel Deliverance, the tale of a traumatic canoe trip. The large-framed, hard-drinking man wrote poems about rugged types, from football players to backwoods Southerners that “search the lakes and trees and workday fragments of his experience for a clue to the meaning of existence.” His volumes of poems include Into the Stone and Other Poems and The Strength of the Fields.