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Robert Penn Warren Reader
extremely rare,very good condition
- GenresPoetryFictionCollections
Hardcover
First published January 1, 1987
39 people want to read
About the author
Robert Penn Warren
347 books1,027 followersRobert 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.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
November 19, 2012
Birth of Love
Season late, day late, sun just down, and the sky
Cold gunmetal but with a wash of live rose, and she,
From water the color of sky except where
Her motion has fractured it to shivering splinters of silver,
Rises. Stands on the raw grass. Against
The new-curdling night of spruces, nakedness
Glimmers and, at bosom and flank, drips
With fluent silver. The man,
Some ten strokes out, but now hanging
Motionless in the gunmetal water, feet
Cold with the coldness of depth, all
History dissolving from him, is
Nothing but an eye. Is an eye only. Sees
The body that is marked by his use, and Time's,
Rise, and in the abrupt and unsustaining element of air,
Sway, lean, grapple the pond-bank. Sees
How, with that posture of female awkwardness that is,
The pure curve of their weight and buttocks
Moon up and, in that swelling unity,
Are silver, and glimmer. Then
The body is erect, she is herself, whatever
Self she may be, and with an end of the towel grasped in each hand,
Slowly draws it back and forth across back and buttocks, but
With face lifted toward the high sky, where
The over-wash of rose color now fails, Fails, though no star
Yet throbs there. The towel, forgotten,
Does not move mow. The gaze
Remains fixed on the sky. The body,
Profiled against the darkness of spruces, seems
To draw to itself, and condense in its whiteness, what light
In the sky yet lingers or, from
The metalic and abstract severity of water, lifts. The body,
With towel now trailing loose from one hand, is
A white stalk from which the face flowers gravely toward the high
sky.
This moment is non-sequential and absolute, and admits
Of no definition, for it
Subsumes all other, and sequential, moments, by which
Definition might be possible. The woman
Face yet raised, wraps,
With a motion as though standing in sleep,
The towel about her body, under her breasts, and,
Holding it there, hieratic as lost in Egypt and erect,
Moves up the path that, stair-steep, winds
Into the clamber and angle of growth. Beyond
The lattice of dusk-dripping leaves, whiteness
Dimly glimmers, goes. Glimmers and is gone, and the man,
Suspended in his darkling medium, stares
Upward where, though not visible, he knows
She moves, and in his heart he cries out that, if only
He had such strength, he would put his hand forth
And maintain it over her to guard, in all
Her out-goings and in-comings, from whatever
Inclemency of sky or slur of the world's weather
Might ever be. In his heart
He cries out. Above.
Height of the spruce-night and heave of the far mountain, he sees
The first star pulse into being. It gleams there.
I do not know what promise it makes to him.
Season late, day late, sun just down, and the sky
Cold gunmetal but with a wash of live rose, and she,
From water the color of sky except where
Her motion has fractured it to shivering splinters of silver,
Rises. Stands on the raw grass. Against
The new-curdling night of spruces, nakedness
Glimmers and, at bosom and flank, drips
With fluent silver. The man,
Some ten strokes out, but now hanging
Motionless in the gunmetal water, feet
Cold with the coldness of depth, all
History dissolving from him, is
Nothing but an eye. Is an eye only. Sees
The body that is marked by his use, and Time's,
Rise, and in the abrupt and unsustaining element of air,
Sway, lean, grapple the pond-bank. Sees
How, with that posture of female awkwardness that is,
The pure curve of their weight and buttocks
Moon up and, in that swelling unity,
Are silver, and glimmer. Then
The body is erect, she is herself, whatever
Self she may be, and with an end of the towel grasped in each hand,
Slowly draws it back and forth across back and buttocks, but
With face lifted toward the high sky, where
The over-wash of rose color now fails, Fails, though no star
Yet throbs there. The towel, forgotten,
Does not move mow. The gaze
Remains fixed on the sky. The body,
Profiled against the darkness of spruces, seems
To draw to itself, and condense in its whiteness, what light
In the sky yet lingers or, from
The metalic and abstract severity of water, lifts. The body,
With towel now trailing loose from one hand, is
A white stalk from which the face flowers gravely toward the high
sky.
This moment is non-sequential and absolute, and admits
Of no definition, for it
Subsumes all other, and sequential, moments, by which
Definition might be possible. The woman
Face yet raised, wraps,
With a motion as though standing in sleep,
The towel about her body, under her breasts, and,
Holding it there, hieratic as lost in Egypt and erect,
Moves up the path that, stair-steep, winds
Into the clamber and angle of growth. Beyond
The lattice of dusk-dripping leaves, whiteness
Dimly glimmers, goes. Glimmers and is gone, and the man,
Suspended in his darkling medium, stares
Upward where, though not visible, he knows
She moves, and in his heart he cries out that, if only
He had such strength, he would put his hand forth
And maintain it over her to guard, in all
Her out-goings and in-comings, from whatever
Inclemency of sky or slur of the world's weather
Might ever be. In his heart
He cries out. Above.
Height of the spruce-night and heave of the far mountain, he sees
The first star pulse into being. It gleams there.
I do not know what promise it makes to him.
September 3, 2018
One item in this book is Warren’s essay “On Segregation”
— which is a series of interviews he conducted with southerners in 1956 in the wake of Brown vs. Board of Education. This single piece did more for my understanding of the divisive state of 2018 politics than ANYTHING else I’ve read since the 2016 election. His writing is so honest, direct, compassionate and yet thought-provoking — I wish we had more current journalists and writers with his tact and judgment.
February 8, 2026
One of my favorite books is All the King's Men. However I could not figure out Wilderness. It is the story of a slew footed Jew from Bavaria whose father fought in the 1848 revolutions in Germany and who wants to follow in the footsteps by coming to the US to fight for freedom. When he gets here, things are complicated. The Union Army won't take him as a soldier because of his foot, he arrives in time for the Draft riots in NY and sees black people being hunted and murdered. With a stake from a relative he becomes an assistant sutler selling to the Union Army. There he encounters more racism, cruelty, and various assaults on his idealism. In the end he kills a rebel scavenger and feels like he has fought for freedom.
That's the story line. What else happened, I am not sure. There are many instances where the reader is told Adam, the protagonist, sees something or does something that seems important but I never got a clue what those thing were.
The writing paints a picture of Civil War times from Gettysburg to the Wilderness as a hellhole populated by very unsavory characters.
In the end Adam, whose shoes get stolen, including one specially adapted for his bad foot, takes a new pair of shoes off the unknown rebel he kills. The rebel had gotten those boots off a dead Union soldier. Adam resolves to be worthy of the nameless soldiers and what they as men and in their error have endured.
That's the story line. What else happened, I am not sure. There are many instances where the reader is told Adam, the protagonist, sees something or does something that seems important but I never got a clue what those thing were.
The writing paints a picture of Civil War times from Gettysburg to the Wilderness as a hellhole populated by very unsavory characters.
In the end Adam, whose shoes get stolen, including one specially adapted for his bad foot, takes a new pair of shoes off the unknown rebel he kills. The rebel had gotten those boots off a dead Union soldier. Adam resolves to be worthy of the nameless soldiers and what they as men and in their error have endured.
Want to read
January 11, 2026Picked up a nice hardback with orange spine at Robert Penn Warren Birthplace in Guthrie KY today. The host said it was a near classic. We shall see.
January 4, 2013
I love short stories and RPW is a master.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews