Selected Poems, 1923-1975

by Robert Penn Warren

Serving as something of a "collected works" compendium, author and poet Robert Penn Warren published these selected poems on 1975, fourteen years before his death. Evident in the selection are the hallmarks of his entire range of poetic output.

Genres: Poetry, American

325 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1975

About the author

Robert Penn Warren was an American poet, novelist, and literary critic and was one of the founders of New Criticism. He was also a charter member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers. He founded the literary journal The Southern Review with Cleanth Brooks in 1935. He received the 1947 Pulitzer Prize for the Novel for All the King's Men (1946) and the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1958 and 1979. He is the only person to have won Pulitzer Prizes for both fiction and poetry.

Reviews

[Chris · Rating 2 out of 5]

I am so not the person to review a book of poetry but since I read them, here goes. Robert Penn Warren's Selected Poems has been sitting on my bookshelf for over 40 years. I tended to view the book with the same look of distaste that Pee Wee Herman viewed the snake tank when the pet store caught fire in "Pee Wee's Great Adventure." I can't say I was pleasantly surprised when I read the poetry but I do have an appreciation for his writing. The fact is though I don't know what he was trying to say in most of his poems. In most instances the titles were not giveaways to what he was thinking. Poems with a bucolic title ended up with sexual references that completely threw me off track. Warren used words that I don't even believe were actually words. At times I tried to keep track of the poem's meter only to be sabotaged by a quirky word. Reading this book was not a labor of love. However, no reading is ever without merit and I did find a passage that spoke to me in my struggle to understand Warren's poetry. I will end my review with it:

So let us bend an ear to them in this hour of lateness,
And what they are trying to say, try to understand,
And try to forgive them their defects, even their greatness,
For we are their children the light of humanness,
And under the shadow of God's closing hand.
- Founding Fathers, Nineteenth-Century Style, Southeast USA

I think that's pretty good.

[Dale Boyer · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm on a Robert Penn Warren kick lately, after having re-read All the King's Men, which I love. I was wondering what his poetry was like, since his prose is SO poetic. It's honestly a bit disappointing, I have to say: quite traditional and formal. There are a number of beautiful lines, but not that many entire poems that I really loved. Though he won two Pulitzers for poetry, Penn Warren's real strength, it seems to me, is poetic prose, especially as exhibited in All the King's Men, where his language is jaw-droppingly beautiful.

[Jay]

These are not just poems but RPW’s conversations with Time ... with memories n mortality in particular.

[Greg · Rating 4 out of 5]

Most people know Warren as a novelist, the author of All the King’s Men. He was an acclaimed poet as well, and a brilliant contributer to the tradition of American poetry. He was expansive in his scope, ranging from post-ante bellum southern culture (not quite modern, as some of his language is offensive), while musing about death, life, the every day, and the infinite. His scope was expansive.

This collection is not necessarily an enjoyable read. My favorite selections are quite foreboding. Examples would be:

“The Nature of a Mirror”:
The sky has murder in the eye, and I
Have murder in the heart, for I
Am only human.
We look at each other, the sky and I.
We understand each other, for

The solstice of summer has sagged, I stand
And wit. Virtue is rewarded, that
Is the nightmare, and I must tell you

That soon now, even before
The change from Daylight Saving Time, the sun,
Beyond the western ridge of black-burnt pine stubs like
A snuggery of rotten shark teeth, sinks
Lower, large, more blank, and redder than
A mother’s rage, as though
F.D.R. had never run for office even, or the first vagina
Had not had the texture of dream. Time

Is the mirror into which you stare. (21)

The end of “Sunset Walk in Thaw-Time in Vermont”:
For what blessing may a man hope for but
An immortality in
The loving vigilance of death. (78)

“Answer Yes or No”
Death is only a technical correction of the market.
Death is only the transfer of energy to a new form.
Death is only the fulfillment of a wish.

Whose wish? (144)

The end of “Holy Writ”:
The death I have entered is a death
In which I cannot lie down.

I have forgotten, literally, God, and through
The enormous hollow of my head, History
Whistles like a wind.

How beautiful are the young, walking!

If I could weep. (182)

Perhaps my favorite lines are the ominous words from the end of “To a Little Girl, One Year Old, in a Ruined Fortress”:
I cannot interpret for you this collocation
Of memories. You will live your own life, and contrive
The language of your own heart, but let that conversation,
In the last analysis, be always of whatever truth you would live.

For fire flames but in the heart of a colder fire.
All voice is but echo caught from a soundless voice.
Height is not deprivation of valley, nor defect of desire,
But defines, for the fortunate, that joy in which all joys should rejoice. (226)

This collection won’t necessarily make you happy, but it will make you think.

See my other reviews here!

[Jan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Penn Warren was also a major american poet. Themes of death, rain, birds, mountains and tragic civilization make for an absorbing collection.

[Linda Lancaster · Rating 5 out of 5]

I return to this collection time and time again. The author captured what it truly means to be alive, as well as to face the end of life. Beautiful and timeless.

[Emily · Rating 5 out of 5]

A master's work.