In a tense moment of Hollywood movie magic, Lewis stood in the nearby shadows and removed an arrow from his quiver. After silently drawing his bow, the arrow sliced through the forest air, and went through the attacker’s chest and into a tall tree on the other side. The killing of the North Georgia attacker would haunt Lewis and his three friends for the rest of their trip down the dangerous Chattooga River rapids.

This chilling scene comes from Deliverance, the 1972 movie adaptation of James Dickey’s 1970 book of the same name. This adaptation starred Burt Reynolds, Ned Beatty, Jon Voight, Ronny Cox, and even Dickey himself as the sheriff! It earned three Academy Award nominations and five Golden Globe Award nominations. With a budget of only $2 million, the movie grossed $46.1 million. The “Dueling Banjos” tune by Arthur Smith that was used in the movie hit second place for four weeks on the Billboard Hot 100. However, this huge success is only a fraction of James Dickey’s story.

James Dickey was born in Atlanta on February 2, 1923. After he graduated from North Fulton High School, Dickey completed a postgraduate year at Darlington School in Rome, Georgia. In 1942, he enrolled at Clemson Agricultural College of South Carolina, and played on the football team as a tailback. After one semester, he enlisted in the military.

During World War II, Dickey served with the U.S. Army Air Forces and flew thirty-eight missions. For his service, he was awarded five Bronze Stars. He later served in the U.S. Air Force during the Korean War. Between the wars, he attended Vanderbilt University and graduated magna cum laude with a degree in English. In 1950, he earned his M.A. in English from Vanderbilt, as well.

After earning his master’s degree, Dickey spent the next six years teaching and writing. He eventually left teaching for a career in advertising, after academia considered some of his poems obscene. “I thought if teaching was going to fall out…” he said in Conversations with Writers, “I’d rather go for the buck … I figured that [what]… an advertising writer would write, I could do with the little finger of the left hand, and they were getting paid good dough for it. I happened to have been right.”

Writing ad copy for much of the 1950s, Dickey cemented a place for himself in the world of advertising and business. However, his strong passion for writing poetry never subsided. This passion resulted in a published collection, which would be the first of many, titled Into the Stone and Other Poems (1960). His work ignited a strong, positive response from readers. He decided to return to writing and teaching full time. Dickey received a Guggenheim Fellowship the next year, further encouraging him.

In 1966, Dickey was appointed the 18^th United State Poet Laureate by the Librarian of Congress under President Lyndon B. Johnson. He was widely recognized again at the presidential inauguration of Jimmy Carter in 1977. There, Dickey read the poem he composed for the occasion at the Kennedy Center. The poem, “The Strength of Fields,” explores strength, community, resilience, and dedication. Dickey’s own devotion to writing showed through his excellent use of language. In a 1981 Writers Yearbook interview, he said: “Poetry is, I think, the highest medium that mankind has ever come up with. It’s language itself, which is a miraculous medium which makes everything else that man has ever done possible.”

Dickey proved his devotion through his prolific career as a poet. His numerous poetry collections include: Into the Stone and Other Poems (1960), Helmets (1964), Buckdancer’s Choice (1965) which received both the National Book Award and the Melville Cane Award, The Strength of Fields (1977), The Eagle’s Mile (1981), and The Whole Motion: Collected Poems (1992). In addition to his novel, Deliverance (1970), Dickey also wrote the novels Jericho: The South Beheld (1974), Alnilam (1987), and To the White Sea (1993).

James Dickey passed away on January 19, 1997, at age 73. He was posthumously inducted into the Georgia Writers Hall of Fame in 2000.