The Collected Poems of Robert Penn Warren [Hardcover]

Robert Penn Warren (Author), John Burt (Editor), Harold Bloom (Foreword)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 1998

In this indispensable volume, John Burt has assembled every poem (with the exception of "Brother to Dragons") ever published by Robert Penn Warren, the first Poet Laureate of the United States.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Warren may be a touch unfashionable now: dead white man of letters, Southern novelist, Harvard-educated, and a purveyor of the "new criticism," the textual analysis that drove literary studies in the 1960s. And it doesn't help that he once espoused segregationist beliefs (adamantly retracted in adulthood). But readers briefly acquainted with his poems from the rather stodgy selections in anthologies may be surprised to find how down-to-earth and actually readable these poems are. Harold Bloom's introductory essay points the reader toward Incarnations (1966-68) and what comes afterward as the strongest work. Short, long, rhymed, unrhymedAthe range here is impressive. The long narrative poem "Audubon: A Vision," which spawned many imitations, exemplifies how Warren's historical approach is both sensual and personal, enlivened by some of the best natural description of our time: "and the large bird,/ Long neck outthrust, wings crooked to scull air, moved/ In a slow calligraphy, crank, flat, and black against/ The color of God's blood spilt, as though/ Pulled by a string." Painstakingly edited by Burt, a professor at Brandeis, this collection brings together published and unpublished work chronologically and details the poet's revisions through various drafts. An important purchase.AEllen Kaufman, Dewey Ballantine Law Lib., New York
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Although Warren is best known as a novelist, especially for All the King's Men (1946), he wrote poetry before turning to fiction and devoted the last 20 years of his career to it. Introducing the first edition of all Warren's published verse, Harold Bloom, perhaps the most well-read living American, avers that Warren's lasting fame depends on his poetry and that he is "clearly" one of "the modern poets who will be permanent in our literature." Those are very large claims, but to sample in this big book, beginning with Bloom's list of his favorites, is to start agreeing with Bloom--strongly. Adept in both formal and free verse, thanks to an innate rhythmic capability and a love of the music--both the sounds and the silences--that written speech connotes, Warren seems determined to answer the question, What is life? by expressing keen observation, colored by personal experience, in precise, concrete language. Even if he finds no final answers to the question, he does find the world and helps readers cherish it more fervently. Ray Olson

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 856 pages
• Publisher: Louisiana State University Press (December 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0807123331
• ISBN-13: 978-0807123331
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 6.7 x 2.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #489,621 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Truly comprehensive volume, February 22, 2005

By 

T. F. Neal "tfn3" (Atlanta, GA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Collected Poems of Robert Penn Warren (Hardcover)

I will leave it to others more qualified to sing the praises of Warren's poetry, and will merely add some vital information that is inexplicably left out of the books description above: this volume contains every poem published and unpublished that Warren ever wrote with the exception of his book-length poem "Brother to Dragons." It includes his earliest poems from the "Fugative" at Vanderbilt, the long and wonderful "Audubon: A Vision" and all subsequent books of poetry he published. Further, Warren was an constantly revising his poems, and the editor here includes Warren's final revised versions of the poems. Finally, Harold Bloom's introductory essay is a fabulous overview. In short, if you own this book and "Brother to Dragons" then you have ever word of Warren's poetry and you are set for a lifetime of enjoyment. Buy it.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Warren's Poetic Canon: 554, June 22, 2006

By 

Robert A. Roark "Biblio-Bo" (Commerce, TX USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Collected Poems of Robert Penn Warren (Hardcover)

John Burt has provided an extraordinary service to students, teachers, scholars, and readers of Robert Penn Warren's poetry. Among the 554 poems included in this volume are previously uncollected poems and an unpublished poem, "With or Without Compass?" (in the textual notes)--all neatly organized chronologically in versions that are explained logically and thoroughly in the section on emendations and in the textual notes. The Explanatory Notes section adds glosses to words and references that might otherwise be obscure to a younger audience. Well formatted, well thoughtout, well articulated. "The" volume of Warren's poetry to own, to read, and to re-read.

14 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Warren's poems are a triumph of the human spirit., December 10, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: The Collected Poems of Robert Penn Warren (Hardcover)

I find most contemporary poetic practice notable only for its miserly concern for the difficulties attendant upon the small, the domestic, the momentary--huge acreages felled only to tell us that someone built a fence in their backyard once, and their husband helped them and the bindweed grew up around it and that was symbolic of relationships enduring and such. I'm therefore ensanguined by Burt's new collection (definitive enough, I should think, to silence the shrieks of Robert Penn Warren harpies), which teaches us that bindweed can't "hold candle to chokeweed," that fences tend "to grow thick with unfencing menses," and that husbands are meaningful only inasmuch as they "lung persevering into the guts of Cromwell." As a result, this collection--under Burt's sprightly editorship --provides a needed corrective; Warren takes an uncompromising view of the suffering subject splayed upon the rack of history, and the results are cheerful and life-affirming. This book made me realize that there's a reason for everything; I will recommend it to my co-workers.