Robert Penn Warren

Biography

Robert Penn Warren (1905–1989) was a poet, critic, novelist, teacher, and co-founder of the Southern Review. He was appointed the nation’s first Poet Laureate in 1986. Author of over two dozen books, he was awarded three Pulitzer Prizes, two for poetry and one for his novel All the King’s Men. He also published a book of short stories, several selections of critical and historical essays, a biography, and two studies of race relations in America.

See Work

CRITICISM / Spring 1931

The Second American Revolution

By Robert Penn Warren

When an American reads the history of his country from the founding of Jamestown to the firing on Fort Sumter, he is moving in a world that is frequently foreign to him. The accidents of place, or even the more intimate ones of heredity...

ESSAYS / Winter 1932

Not Local Color

By Robert Penn Warren

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...

POETRY / Spring 1959

Garland for You

By Robert Penn Warren

Don’t bother a bit, you are only a dream you are having,
And if when you wake your symptoms are not relieved,
That is only because you harbor a morbid craving
For belief in the old delusion in which you have always believed.

POETRY / Summer 1936

Monologue at Midnight

By Robert Penn Warren

Among the pines we ran and called
In joy and innocence, and still
Our voices doubled in the high
Green groining our simplicity.

FICTION / Spring 1935

Her Own People

By Robert Penn Warren

Fishily, he stared at the high ceiling, where grey plaster, delicately ringed by marks of old damp, was still shadowy, although bright sunshine struck into the room between cracks in the drawn blue curtains. Between the cracks in the...

ESSAYS / Winter 1935

John Crowe Ransom: A Study in Irony

By Robert Penn Warren

The poetry of John Crowe Ransom is peculiarly systematic. It refers regularly to a center which is precise and has been objectively formulated by the poet himself, although not in relation to his poetry. Items of his poetic performance...

POETRY / Winter 1942

Pursuit

By Robert Penn Warren

The hunchback on the corner, with gum and shoelaces,
Has his own wisdom and pleasures, and may not be lured
To divulge them to you, for he has merely endured
Your appeal for his sympathy and your kind purchases;

FICTION / Winter 1937

Christmas Gift

By Robert Penn Warren

The big white flakes sank down from the sagging sky. A wet gray light hung over everything; and the flakes looked gray against it, then turned white as they sank toward the dark earth. The roofs of the few houses along the road looked...

POETRY / Spring 1975

Answer to Prayer: A Short Story That Could Be Longer

By Robert Penn Warren

In that bad year, in a city to have now no name,
In the already-dark of a winter’s day, our feet

POETRY / Summer 1935

History

By Robert Penn Warren

Past crag and scarp
At length, way won;
And done
The chert’s sharp
 Incision,