Rate My Professor James Dickey

James Dickey served as poet-in-residence and lecturer in English at San Fernando Valley State College, now California State University, Northridge, from September 1964 to January 1966. During his tenure there, he presented poetry readings, including a notable event in December 1962 where he read from his National Book Award-contending collection Drowning with Others, and participated in campus literary activities such as contributing to the Eclipse magazine in 1966. He earned a B.A. magna cum laude in English and philosophy, minoring in astronomy, from Vanderbilt University in 1949, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa, and an M.A. in English from Vanderbilt in 1950. His early academic appointments included instructor of English at the Rice Institute in Houston, Texas, starting in 1950, and positions at the University of Florida.

Dickey was renowned for his poetry, novels, criticism, and lectures. Key publications include poetry collections such as Into the Stone and Other Poems (1960), Drowning with Others (1962), Two Poems of the Air (1964), Helmets (1964), Buckdancer's Choice: Poems (1965), Poems 1957-1967 (1967), The Eye-Beaters, Blood, Victory, Madness, Buckhead and Mercy (1970), The Zodiac (1976), The Strength of Fields (1979), Puella (1982), and The Whole Motion: Collected Poems, 1945-1992 (1992). His novels encompass Deliverance (1970), Alnilam (1987), and To the White Sea (1993). He received a Guggenheim Fellowship following Drowning with Others and the National Book Award for Poetry for Buckdancer's Choice in 1965. From 1966 to 1968, he served as the 18th United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress. Subsequently, he held the position of Professor of English and writer-in-residence at the University of South Carolina from 1969 until 1997. Dickey's work focused on poetry exploring themes from his World War II and Korean War pilot experiences, nature, survival, and the American South, establishing him as one of the most distinguished modern American poets.