Promises

by Robert Penn Warren

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award.

Genres: Poetry

84 pages

First published January 1, 1957

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

[Patricia N. McLaughlin · Rating 3 out of 5]

These poems read more like truncated short stories—or flash fiction before that was a thing—but that’s typical of Warren: “A poem for me and a novel are not so different. They start much the same way, on the same emotional journey, and can go either way. ... At a certain level an idea takes hold. Now it doesn’t necessarily come with a form; it comes as an idea or an impulse. ... I’ve started many things in one form and shifted to another. ... The interesting topics, the basic ideas in the poems and the basic ideas in the novels are the same.” Yep, and this collection contains some good examples of shifting from one form to the other.

Favorite Poems:
“Hands Are Paid”

[Daniel · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm not sure I'm a fan of Warren as a poet. My grandfather was from the South and told stories that were organized more by associations than in a logical, linear--Warren's poetry reminds me of that. The concepts and images have that kind of organization and sound and rhythm seem to be his main concern in the work. As a result, it's a hard thing to get a real feel for his poems in total on a first reading.

Also he is very much a Southern writer whose emotions are rooted firmly in the South--it's hard for me to respond to that.