Robert Penn Warren

Robert Penn Warren (April 24, 1905 - September 15, 1989) was an American poet and writer.

Related Topics:
April 24 - 1905 - September 15 - 1989 - American

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He was born in Guthrie, Kentucky and graduated from Vanderbilt University in 1925 and the University of California, Berkeley in 1926. He later attended Yale University and obtained his B. Litt. at Oxford University in England in 1930.

Related Topics:
Guthrie, Kentucky - Vanderbilt University - University of California, Berkeley - Yale University - Oxford University - England

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Penn Warren won the Pulitzer Prize in 1947 for his best known work, the novel All the King's Men. He won Pulitzer Prizes in poetry in 1958 for Promises: Poems 1954-1956, and in 1979 for Now and Then. All the King's Men became a very successful film in 1949.

Related Topics:
Pulitzer Prize - All the King's Men

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In 1981, Warren was selected as a MacArthur Fellow and later was named as the first U.S. Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry on February 26, 1986.

Related Topics:
MacArthur Fellow - Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry - February 26 - 1986

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While still an undergraduate at Vanderbilt, he became associated with the group of poets there known as the Fugitives, and somewhat later, during the early 1930s, Warren and some of the same writers formed a group known as the Southern Agrarians. He contributed "The Briar Patch" to the Agrarian manifesto I'll Take My Stand along with 11 other Southern writers and poets (including fellow Vanderbilt poet/critics John Crowe Ransom, Allen Tate, and Donald Davidson).

Related Topics:
Fugitives - 1930s - Southern Agrarians - Agrarian - John Crowe Ransom - Allen Tate - Donald Davidson

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Coauthor, with Cleanth Brooks of Understanding Poetry, an influential literature textbook (which was followed by other similarly coauthored textbooks Understanding Fiction and Modern Rhetoric) written from what can be called a New Critic approach.

Related Topics:
Cleanth Brooks - New Critic

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In April of 2005, the United States Postal Service issued a commemorative stamp to mark the 100th anniversary of Penn Warren's birth. Introduced at the Post Office in his native Guthrie, it depicts the author as he appeared in a 1948 photograph, with a background scene of a political rally designed to evoke the setting of All the King's Men. His son and daughter, Gabriel and Roseanna Warren, were in attendance.

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