Robert Penn Warren: Distinguished American Writer and Poet :: Biography Biographies Essays

Robert Penn state of warren Distinguished American source and PoetRobert Penn warren, born in Guthrie, Kentucky in 1905, was one of thetwentieth centurys most tall American writers. He was a distinguishednovelist and poet, literary critic, essayist, short written report writer, andcoeditor of numerous textbooks. He was also a founding editor of The southerlyReview, a journal of literary criticism and political thought.The primary influences on Robert warrens career as a poet were probablyhis Kentucky boyhood, and his relationships with his pay discharge and hismaternal grandfather. As a boy, Warren spent many hours on hisgrandfathers farm, absorbing stories of the civilian War and the localtobacco wars between growers and wholesalers, the subject of his firstnovel, shadow Riders. His grandfather, Thomas Gabriel Penn, had been acalvary officer in the Civil War and was well-read in both military historyand poetry, which he sometimes recited for Robert.Roberts father was a banker who had once had aspirations to move alawyer and a poet. Because of economic troubles, and his responsibilityfor a family of half-brothers and sisters when his father died, RobertFranklin Warren forsook his literary ambitions and habituated himself to morelucrative businesses. Robert Warren did not always have ambitions to becomea writer, in fact, one of his earlier dreams was to become an adventurer onthe high seas. This fantasy might have indeed come about, for his fatherintended to get him an appoint ment to Annapolis, had it not been for achildhood stroke in which he lost sight in one of his eyes.Warren was an outstanding student but there were also many books at home,and he savored reading. His father at one time aspired to be a poet. Hisgrandfather Penn, with whom he spent much time when he was young, was an olympian storyteller and greatly influenced young Red. But both of thesemen whom he loved had in some sense failed to achieve. By contrast, Warrenwas hardene d to achieve, to be successful.During his college years at Vanderbilt, the sense of being physicallymaimed, as well as the fear sympathetic blindness in his remain good eyebecame almost unbearable.At Vanderbilt University he met Allen Tate, John Crowe Ransom, DonaldDavidson, and others evoke in poetry. As part of The Fugitives, aprivate group that met off campus, he delved deeply into poetry, and hisfirst poems were published in their short-lived quarterly. Warren had aremarkable capacity for friendship, and he was in touch with these men allof their lives. For years Tate was first critic of his poetry.