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

Robert Penn warren Distinguished American Writer and PoetRobert Penn Warren, born in Guthrie, Kentucky in 1905, was one of thetwentieth centurys most eminent American writers. He was a distinguishednovelist and poet, literary critic, essayist, short story writer, andcoeditor of numerous textbooks. He was also a founding editor of The SouthernReview, a daybook 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 capture and hismaternal grandfather. As a boy, Warren spent many hours on hisgrandfathers farm, absorbing stories of the Civil War and the local anaesthetictobacco wars between growers and wholesalers, the subject of his firstnovel, Night 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 become alawyer and a poet. Because of economic troubles, and his dutyfor a family of half-brothers and sisters when his father died, RobertFranklin Warren forsook his literary ambitions and devoted himself to more moneymaking 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 fancy might have indeed come about, for his fatherintended to agitate him an appointment to Annapolis, had it not been for achildhood accident in which he lost sight in one of his mettles.Warren was an outstanding scholar 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 anexceptional storyteller and greatly influenced young Red. But both of thesemen whom he loved had in some sense failed to achieve. By contrast, Warrenwas determined to achieve, to b e successful.During his college geezerhood at Vanderbilt, the sense of being physicallymaimed, as well as the fear sympathetic blindness in his remaining good eyebecame almost unbearable.At Vanderbilt University he met Allen Tate, John Crowe Ransom, DonaldDavidson, and others interested in poetry. As part of The Fugitives, aprivate group that met off campus, he delved deep into poetry, and hisfirst poems were published in their short-lived quarterly. Warren had a incomparable capacity for friendship, and he was in touch with these men allof their lives. For years Tate was first critic of his poetry.