The Collected Poems of Robert Penn Warren - Hardcover

Warren, Robert Penn

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0807123331 ISBN 13: 9780807123331

Publisher: LSU Press, 1998

Synopsis

Winner of the C. Hugh Holman Award

A central figure in twentieth-century American literature, Robert Penn Warren (1905–1989) was appointed by the Library of Congress as the first Poet Laureate of the United States in 1985. Although better known for his fiction, especially his novel All the King’s Men, it is mainly his poetry―spanning sixty years, fifteen volumes of verse, and a wide range of styles―that reveals Warren to be one of America’s foremost men of letters.

In this indispensable volume, John Burt, Warren’s literary executor, has assembled every poem Warren ever published (with the exception of Brother to Dragons), including the many poems he published in The Fugitive and other magazines, as well as those that appeared in his small press works and broadsides. Burt has also exhaustively collated all of the published versions of Warren’s poems―which, in some cases, appeared as many as six different times with substantive revisions in every line―as well as his typescripts and proofs. And since Warren never seemed to reread any of his books without a pencil in his hand, Burt has referred to Warren’s personal library copies. This comprehensive edition also contains textual notes, lists of emendations, and explanatory notes.

Warren was born and raised in Guthrie, Kentucky, where southern agrarian values and a predilection for storytelling were ingrained in him as a young boy. By 1925, when he graduated from Vanderbilt University, he was already the most promising of that exceptional set of poets and intellectuals known as the Fugitives. Warren devoted most of the 1940s and 1950s to writing prose and literary criticism, but from the late 1950s he composed primarily poetry, with each successive volume of verse that he penned demonstrating his rigorous and growing commitment to that genre. The mature visionary power and technical virtuosity of his work in the 1970s and early 1980s emanated from his strongly held belief that “only insofar as the work [of art] establishes and expresses a self can it engage us.” Many of Warren’s later poems, which he deemed “some of my best,” rejoice in the possibilities of old age and the poet’s ability for “continually expanding in a vital process of definition, affirmation, revision, and growth, a process that is the image, we may say, of the life process.”

About this title

About the Author:

John Burt, professor of English at Brandeis University, is the author of Robert Penn Warren and American Idealism and the poetry collections The Way Downand Work Without Hope.

Review:

...[this] extraordinary volume, magnificently edited by John Burt, should establish the permanent place of Warren's poetry in America's literary achievement.... John Burt's devoted edition gives us the definitive text of all of Warren's poetry and thus restores an American masterwork, one that will be read, studied and absorbed so long as the love for, and understanding of, great poetry survives among us. -- The Los Angeles Times Sunday Book Review, Harold Bloom

Acquaintance With Time In Early Autumn
Adieu Sentimentale
Admonition To The Dead
Admonition To Those Who Mourn
After Restless Night
After Teacups
After The Dinner Party
Afterward
Aged Man Surveys The Past Time
Aging Man At Noon In Timeless Noon Of Summer
Aging Painter Sits Where The Great Tower Heaves Down Midnight
Ah, Anima!
Alf Burt, Tenant Farmer
Amazing Grace In The Back Country
American Portrait: Old Style
Another Dimension
Answer To Prayer
Antinomy: Time And Identity
The Apocalypse
Apologia For Grief
Arizona Midnight
Aspen Leaf In Windless World
Athenian Death
Aubade For Hope
Audubon: 1. Was Not The Lost Dauphin
Audubon: 2. The Dream He Never Knew The End Of
Audubon: 3. We Are Only Ourselves
Audubon: 4. The Sign Whereby He Knew
Audubon: 5. The Sound Of That Wind
Audubon: 6. Love And Knowledge
Audubon: 7. Tell Me A Story
August Moon
August Revival : Crosby Junction
Auto-da-fe
Autumn Twilight Piece
Autumnal Equinox On Mediterranean Beach
The Ballad Of Billie Potts
Ballad Of Your Puzzlement
Ballad: Between The Boxcars (1923)
Basic Syllogism
Bearded Oaks
Better Than Counting Sheep
Bicentennial
Blessed Accident
Boy Wandering In Simms' Valley
Boyhood In Tobacco Country
Breaking The Code
Brotherhood In Pain
Calendar
Caribou
Chief Joseph Of The Nez Perce; Who Called Themselves 'the Real People'
Cocktail Party
Code Book Lost
Cold Colloquy
Convergences
The Corner Of The Eye
Covered Bridge
Crime
Croesus In Autumn
The Cross
Crusade
Cycle
Dawn
The Day Dr. Knox Did It: 1. Place And Time
The Day Dr. Knox Did It: 2. The Event
The Day Dr. Knox Did It: 3. A Confederate Veteran Tries To Explain The
The Day Dr. Knox Did It: 4. The Place Where The Boy Pointed
The Day Dr. Knox Did It: 5. And All That Came Thereafter
Dead Horse In Field
Deep - Deeper Down
Delight: 1. Into Broad Daylight
Delight: 2. Love: 1
Delight: 2. Love: 2
Delight: 3. Something Is Going To Happen
Delight: 4. Dream Of A Dream The Small Boy Had
Delight: 5. Two Poems About Suddenly And A Rose: 1
Delight: 5. Two Poems About Suddenly And A Rose: 2
Delight: 6. Not To Be Trusted
Delight: 7. Finisterre
Delusion? - No!
Departure
The Distance Between: Picnic Of Old Friends
Diver
Doubleness In Time
Dragon-tree
Dream
Dream Of A Dream
Dream, Dump-heap, And Civilization
Dreaming In Daylight
Eagle Descending
Easter Morning; Crosby Junction
Eidolon
Empire
Empty White Blotch On Map Of Universe: A Possible View
End Of Season
English Cocker: Old And Blind
Evening Hawk
Evening Hour
Fall Comes In Back-country Vermont
Far West Once
Fatal Interview: Penthesilea And Achilles
Fear And Trembling
A Few Axioms For A Young Man
The Fierce Horsemen
Filling Night With The Name; Funeral As Local Color
First Dawn Light
First Moment Of Autumn Recognized
The First Time
For A Friend Who Thinks Himself Urbane
For A Self-possessed Friend
The Garden
Garden Waters
Garland For You: 1. Clearly About You
Garland For You: 2. Lullaby: Exercise In Human Charity And
Garland For You: 3. Man In --Table of Poems

About this edition

• Publisher: LSU Press
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0807123331
• ISBN 13: 9780807123331
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 838
• Editor: Burt John D.