James Dickey Awarded 1996 Harriet Monroe Poetry Award

James Dickey has been selected by the University of Chicago to receive the Harriet Monroe Poetry Award. Dickey, poet-in-residence and Carolina Professor of English at the University of South Carolina, is best known for his novel Deliverance (1970), which was made into a Hollywood film. His third volume of poetry, Buckdancer’s Choice (1965), won the National Book Award in Poetry. From 1966 to 1968 he served as poetry consultant to the Library of Congress. In 1977 Dickey read his poem “The Strength of Fields” at President Jimmy Carter’s inauguration. His recent works include The Eagle’s Mile (1990) and Falling, May Day Sermon, and Other Poems(1982). The award was established by the late Harriet Monroe, founding editor of Poetry: A Magazine of Verse, which played a central part in reviving poetry in America in the early part of the century. The award is a cash prize “to any American poet of distinction or of distinguished promise . . . and in making the awards the committee shall give preference to poets of progressive rather than academic tendencies.” The first poet selected for the award was Muriel Rukeyser in 1941. Since then, Marianne Moore, Wallace Stevens, e. e. cummings, Robert Penn Warren, Elizabeth Bishop, Allen Ginsberg and Adrienne Rich have been among the recipients.