Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #695164 in Books
• Published on: 2001-04
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 285 pages

From Publishers Weekly
For those overwhelmed by the recent Collected Poems of Robert Penn Warren, the editor of that volume, Brandeis professor of English John Burt, has culled The Selected Poems of Robert Penn Warren. As Burt notes, while RPW was first poet laureate of the U.S. and twice the winner of the Pulitzer Prize, he, like Thomas Hardy, is still better known as a novelist, though he "thought of himself, first and last, as a poet" as, rightly, did Hardy. Burt's selection and cogent introduction bring readers into line with the poet's self-conception, presenting ample, accessible choices from Penn Warren's 60-plus years of published verse.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
One could be forgiven for not acquiring editor Burt's massive Collected Poems of Robert Penn Warren (1998), but this selection of some 200 poems is surely a must for good representative collections of American literature. Best-known for his novels, especially the Pulitzer Prize-winning All the King's Men, arguably the best American political novel, Warren devoted more of a long career to poetry than to fiction. His early work, culminating in the multivoiced "Ballad of Billie Potts," established his critique of the empty fury of politics at its too-frequent worst. After 10 years' poetic silence, he brought out Brother to Dragons (1953), a book-length resuscitation of Thomas Jefferson to argue with himself about his own principles (there are excerpts from the book here, whereas it was absent from Collected Poems). Warren's late poetry became concerned with embracing and accepting the world very concretely, turning decisively away from conceptions and toward reality. Ray Olson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Customer Reviews

Great poems, and models for more poetry
I bought this, because as an unpublished poet, I wanted to read something that was well-written but which was outside of what I've been influenced by for many years: the New York School (Ashbery, O'Hara, et al.) and Wallace Stevens. Plus, Warren brings a sense of history, as in much of his fiction, to his poetry--something I find lacking in much American poetry of the last 75 years. That sense gives it an extra dimension. Wonderful book, and an exemplary writer.