Introduction: The Aesthetics of Robert Penn Warren

• Published in: Style (University Park, PA) Vol. 36; no. 2; pp. 200 - 202
• Main Author: Ferriss, Lucy
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: DeKalb Pennsylvania State University Press 22.06.2002; Penn State University Press
• Subjects: Bloom, Harold (1930-2019); Burke, Kenneth (1897-1993); Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns) (1888-1965); Ferriss, Lucy (1954- ); Fugitive poets; Literary criticism; Literary style; Modernist poetry; Poetry; Political ideologies; Political influence; Political rhetoric; Ransom, John Crowe (1888-1974); Warren, Robert Penn (1905-1989)
• ISSN: 0039-4238; 2374-6629

Randolph Runyon finds a verbal and symbolic structure in the deliberate sequence in which Warren placed the poems of "Island of Summer," the first section of Warren's Pulitzer-winning Incarnations: Poems 1966-1968. [...]he finds that the urge toward sequencing so abundantly evident in Incarnations is tied to Warren's interest in the interlocking poems of John Crowe Ransom-another instance of the inseparability of Warren the poet and Warren the critic. [...]these multiple approaches to the ripening of Warren's poetic choices and human judgment, we arrive at John Burt's broad assessment carrying the welcome caveat that the differences between Warren's earlier years and his mature writings "may not simply be gross stylistic ones so much as fine ones about one's take on similar events." [...]as Charlotte Beck goes on to argue in "Robert Penn Warren and the Politics of (Im)purity," Warren's affinity for "holistic views of reality" as opposed to more clearly delineated (and politicized) points of view goes back to theories he espoused in "Pure and Impure Poetry" and in his critique of Coleridge.