Description

From the Franklin Library Collection. Selected Poems 1923-1975: Robert Penn Warren Franklin Library. Leather Bound Pages, 294 Leather Bound Gilt page edges Silk Endpapers Raised Bands Satin Bookmark Ribbon Accented in 22kt gold Limited Edition First Edition Society Comes with “Notes from The Editors” Booklet. At the age of 71, Robert Penn Warren can scarcely be described an obscure or unappreciated writer. Twice In a career of copious production and numerous awards he has won the Pulitzer Prize—for fiction, with “All the King's Men,” in 1946; and for poetry, with “Promises,” in 1957—and few indeed are the official literary honors that have been denied him. a literary culture like ours, moreover, in which commercial success is often felt to be at odds with academic scruples, Mr. Warren has enjoyed the best of both worlds. Several of his novels have been major book club selections, best sellers, and the basis of popular movies. Yet for the college classroom where best sellers are scorned and only “serious” literature is studied, and where Mr. Warren himself has spent much of his life teaching, he has written (in collaboration with Cleanth Brooks and others) textbooks such as “Understanding Poetry” and “Understanding Fiction” that have influenced several generations of students, not a few of whom became writers themselves. As a critic, too, he has exhibited a similar versatility of interests. From what other exponent of the New Criticism, which prized formal complexity and control, could we have expected a book like the “Homage to Theodore Dreiser” that Mr. Warren published in 1971? In politics, also, he has traveled a long, hard road from the reactionary Southern orthodoxy of “I'll Take My Stand” (1930) to the liberalism of “Segregation: The Inner Conflict the South” (1956) and “Who Speaks for the Negro?” (1965). Few other writers in our history have labored with such consistent distinction and such unflagging energy in so many separate branches of the liteiary profession. He is man‐of‐letters on the old‐fashioned, outsize scale, and everything he writes is stamped with. the passion and the embattled intelligence of a man for whom the art of literature is inseparable from the most fundamental imperatives of life. Yet it is no idle paradox to suggest that this writer, so heaped with honors and awards, remains in some sense an obscure figure. Certainly as a poet he has not been accorded the readership he deserves. We are not used to finding our greatest poets among the authors of best‐selling novels or best ‐ selling textbooks. We prefer them to be a little more ‘specialized in their vocation, little more remote from the hurly‐burly where we live our lives and pursue our worldly interests. For a poet to succeed in the marketplace of letters is —well, unexpected. It diverts attention from his seriousness, and generates suspicion about his quality. For this reason, it will come as a surprise, perhaps, at least lb readers who have not kept up with the large quantity of poetry Mr. Warren has written in recent years, to be told that he is one of our greatest living poets. His poetry is so unlike that of most other poets now claiming our attention, however, that it requires a certain adjustment of the eye and the ear, and of that other faculty —call it the moral imagination —to which Mr. Warren's verse speaks with so much urgency and that of so many other poets nowadays does not. We are long way, in this poetry, from the verse snapshot and the campy valentine—a long way, too, from the verse diaries, raw confessions and dirty laundry lists that have come to occupy such a large place in our poetic literature. Mr. Warren's language, reaching in long‐breathed lines across the page or building to its revelations and climaxes in verse paragraphs as highly charged with emotions and events as any of his stories, is at once grave and earthy, an instrument of metaphysical discourse that lives on easy terms with the folklore of the past. This is a poetry haunted by the lusts and loves of the flesh, filled with dramatic incident, vivid landscapes and philosophical reflection—a poetry of passion recollected in the tragic mode. It teems with experience, and with the lessons and losses of experience. One would be tempted to call it elegiac if that did not suggest something too settled and too distant from the urgencies of appetite and aspiration that inform its every In all of tihis poetry there are forceful reminders of the author's gifts as a novelist, for no matter how compressed or telescoped the fable may be, these are poems that often tell a story, or evoke the setting and characters for one. The language, too, with its flow of “regional” Southern speech tempered to the economies and elisions of the verse medium, is alive with narrative continuities and the atmosphere of fictional episode. One is reminded of an observation made by Mark Van Doren some 30 years ago, in his book, “The Noble Voice.” “The facts of life are found in story, which poetry has ceased to tell,” he wrote, and in Mr. Warren's poetry we are recalled once again, no matter how obliquely at times, to these “facts of life” that were once the sovereign province of the vocation. The Impulse to narrative retrospection was there in the early poems—in the “Ballad of Billie Potts,” based on a folk tale of his native Kentucky, and in the more metaphysical poems, “Bearded Oaks” and “Original Sin: A Short Story,” which decades of anthologizing have done nothing to diminish —and it is there in the new poems, “Can I See Arcturus From Where I Stand?,” ‘which open the volume under review. The voice, the themes, the obsession with evil, with the tran sience and glitter and dreamlike quality of experience, are there too, strong and forthright, both in the early and in the late verse. Terminology that may be used in this description: Bookplate: Highly sought after by some collectors, a book plate is an inscribed or decorative device that identifies the owner, or former owner, of a book. Most often bookplates are affixed to the endpaper of a book. Bump: Indicates that the affected part of the book has been impacted in such a way so as to cause a flattening, indention, or light bending. Deckle Edge: Deckle edge is the feathered edge of a page. Traditionally and historically, this was a side effect of the process of making paper. Dust Jacket: Sometimes used as another term for dust jacket, a protective and often decorative wrapper, usually made of paper which wraps around the binding of a book Ex-library: A former library book, generally containing library acquisition and ownership stamped Markings, and other typical indications of the library's use. Foxing: Or, Foxed is the age related browning, or brown-yellowish spots, that can occur to book paper over time. When this aging process happens to the paper in a book it is referred to as "foxed". Remainder Mark: A remainder marked book is just that - a mark to the page edges of a book. This mark is placed on the page edges by a publisher as books are returned from bookstores or sold to discounters. Rubbing: Abrasion or wear to the surface. Usually used in reference to a book's boards or dust-jacket. Shelf Wear: (shelving wear) describes damage caused over time to a book by placing and removing a book from a shelf. Soiled: Generally, refers to minor discoloration or staining.