The Collected Poems of Robert Penn Warren
Warren may be a touch unfashionable now: dead white man of letters, Southern novelist, Harvard-educated, and a purveyor of the "new criticism," the textual analysis that drove literary studies in the 1960s. And it doesn't help that he once espoused segregationist beliefs (adamantly retracted in adulthood). But readers briefly acquainted with his poems from the rather stodgy selections in anthologies may be surprised to find how down-to-earth and actually readable these poems are. Harold Bloom's introductory essay points the reader toward Incarnations (1966-68) and what comes afterward as the strongest work. Short, long, rhymed, unrhymedAthe range here is impressive. The long narrative poem "Audubon: A Vision," which spawned many imitations, exemplifies how Warren's historical approach is both sensual and personal, enlivened by some of the best natural description of our time: "and the large bird,/ Long neck outthrust, wings crooked to scull air, moved/ In a slow calligraphy, crank, flat, and black against/ The color of God's blood spilt, as though/ Pulled by a string." Painstakingly edited by Burt, a professor at Brandeis, this collection brings together published and unpublished work chronologically and details the poet's revisions through various drafts. An important purchase.AEllen Kaufman, Dewey Ballantine Law Lib., New YorkCopyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.