Introduction


James Dickey
Though he published an astounding amount of poetry throughout his lengthy career, James Dickey is most closely associated with the line “Squeal like a pig!” Ironically, it is a line he never wrote. Its fame comes from the harrowing and iconic rape scene in the film version of Dickey’s first novel, Deliverance. The film was critically lauded and received numerous Academy Award nominations, and the novel itself was in many ways emblematic of Dickey’s other works. In all his writing, Dickey focused on the poetic and the metaphysical, with a particular emphasis on nature. In 1987, he published his second novel, Alnilam, a large, challenging book that never managed to achieve the success of Deliverance.

Essential Facts

  1. As a young man, Dickey served in both the U.S. Army and the U.S. Air Force during World War II and the Korean War, respectively.
  2. For two years in the mid-1960s, Dickey was the poetry consultant to the National Library of Congress.
  3. Dickey received a National Book Award for his 1966 poetry collection Buckdancer’s Choice.
  4. In 1973, he was nominated for an Academy Award for adapting his first novel, Deliverance, to the screen.
  5. Dickey was the poet-in-residence at the University of South Carolina and taught there for nearly thirty years, right up until his death in 1997.