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poets laureate

Robert Penn Warren submission

Robert Penn Warren’s Submission of “John Crowe Ransom: A Study in Irony,” 1935

In 1931, Robert Penn Warren received free books in exchange for penning unsigned reviews for the Virginia Quarterly Review. However, his poems and stories were repeatedly rejected. Finally, he wrote the editor, Stringfellow Barr: “If my prose . . . is decent enough for you to print, my verse is equally, or more, so. Or, is a prose review regarded as merely a space filler in the Quarterly?”

Not Local Color

A warlike, various, and a tragical age is best to write of, but worst to write in, said Abraham Cowley. When a people looks back on such an age in its own history, another question is raised as it evokes in memory those wars, the turbulent variety, and the tragedy. From such reflection they will ask: what have these tumults wrought?