Robert Penn Warren

Robert Penn Warren (born April 24, 1905, Guthrie, Ky., U.S.—died Sept. 15, 1989, Stratton, Vt.) was an American novelist, poet, critic, and teacher, best-known for his treatment of moral dilemmas in a South beset by the erosion of its traditional, rural values. He became the first poet laureate of the United States in 1986.

In 1921 Warren entered Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tenn., where he joined a group of poets who called themselves the Fugitives (q.v.). Warren was among several of the Fugitives who joined with other Southerners to publish the anthology of essays I’ll Take My Stand (1930), a plea for the agrarian way of life in the South.

After graduation from Vanderbilt in 1925, he studied at the University of California, Berkeley (M.A., 1927), and at Yale. He then went to the University of Oxford as a Rhodes scholar. From 1930 to 1950 he served on the faculty of several colleges and universities—including Vanderbilt and the University of Minnesota. With Cleanth Brooks and Charles W. Pipkin, he founded and edited The Southern Review (1935–42), possibly the most influential American literary magazine of the time. He taught at Yale University from 1951 to 1973. His Understanding Poetry (1938) and Understanding Fiction (1943), both written with Cleanth Brooks, were enormously influential in spreading the doctrines of the New Criticism (q.v.).

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A Study of Poetry

Warren’s first novel, Night Rider (1939), is based on the tobacco war (1905–08) between the independent growers in Kentucky and the large tobacco companies. It anticipates much of his later fiction in the way it treats a historical event with tragic irony, emphasizes violence, and portrays individuals caught in moral quandaries. His best-known novel, All the King’s Men (1946), is based on the career of the Louisiana demagogue Huey Long and tells the story of an idealistic politician whose lust for power corrupts him and those around him. This novel won the Pulitzer Prize in 1947 and, when made into a film, won the Academy Award for best motion picture of 1949. Warren’s other novels include At Heaven’s Gate (1943); World Enough and Time (1950), which centres on a controversial murder trial in Kentucky in the 19th century; Band of Angels (1956); and The Cave (1959). His long narrative poem, Brother to Dragons (1953), dealing with the brutal murder of a slave by two nephews of Thomas Jefferson, is essentially a versified novel, and his poetry generally exhibits many of the concerns of his fiction. His other volumes of poetry include Promises: Poems, 1954–1956; You, Emperors, and Others (1960); Audubon: A Vision (1969); Now and Then; Poems 1976–1978; Rumor Verified (1981); Chief Joseph (1983); and New and Selected Poems, 1923–1985 (1985). The Circus in the Attic (1948), which included “Blackberry Winter,” considered by some critics to be one of Warren’s supreme achievements, is a volume of short stories, and Selected Essays (1958) is a collection of some of his critical writings.

Besides receiving the Pulitzer Prize for fiction, Warren twice won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry (1958, 1979) and, at the time of his selection as poet laureate in 1986, was the only person ever to win the prize in both categories. In his later years he tended to concentrate on his poetry.