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Dickey's poetic sensibility, he admits, was the main problem in writing Deliverance. "I wanted to write simple, imaginative prose that did not strain for metaphorical brilliance," he explains. "I'm tired of reading novels in which nothing happens. Books like that are really rehearsals for some imagined literary display. I spent time taking things out of my prose." His own book came hard. Separating words from rhythm, he says, was like "putting on a wooden overcoat." Dickey worked at it on and off for seven years. Though he has doubts about writing another, financially he can have no regrets. Book clubs, movie and paperback contracts already assure him of something like half a million dollars. At that, Deliverance is only one of four Dickey books that will be published in 1970. They include a new volume of poems, a journal and a series of self-interviews.