Robert Penn Warren Quotes

Robert Penn Warren — American Novelist born on April 24, 1905, died on September 15, 1989

Robert Penn Warren was an American poet, novelist, and literary critic and was one of the founders of New Criticism. He was also a charter member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers. He founded the influential literary journal The Southern Review with Cleanth Brooks in 1935. He received the 1947 Pulitzer Prize for the Novel for his novel All the King's Men and the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1958 and 1979. He is the only person to have won Pulitzer Prizes for both fiction and poetry... (wikipedia)

The poem is a little myth of man's capacity of making life meaningful. And in the end, the poem is not a thing we see-it is, rather, a light by which we may see-and what we see is life.

How do poems grow? They grow out of your life.

I've been to a lot of places and done a lot of things, but writing was always first. It's a kind of pain I can't do without.

For what is a poem but a hazardous attempt at self-understanding: it is the deepest part of autobiography.

I don't expect you'll hear me writing any poems to the greater glory of Ronald and Nancy Reagan.