Selected Poems of Robert Penn Warren

by Warren, Robert Penn

• ISBN13: 9780807126776
• ISBN10: 0807126772
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2001-04-01
• Publisher: Louisiana State Univ Pr

Summary

John Burt's Selected Poems of Robert Penn Warren is more broadly representative of Warren's poetry than any previous such gartering. More than two hundred poems from every phase grace the volume, a vehicle ideal for sampling or soaking in the finest of Warren's rich output.

With each poem. Burt has carefully located the version that constitutes Warren's final revision. His introduction gives an eloquent overview of the poet's career, touching on every published book of verse and highlighting significant lines. A "selected" collection in the truest sense, featuring several previously unpublished pieces, this treasure is at once new and familiar.

Burt showcases some very early verse, such as "The Bird and the Stone" and "Oxford City Wall", the only poem known to derive from Warren's days as a Rhodes scholar. There are also portions from the book-length poems, Brother to Dragons and Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce. Arranged chronologically, the selections run the course from darker, more self-consciously formal poems of the 1920s and early 1930s, including "Kent

Table of Contents

Introduction	xiii
About the Texts	xxvii
Acknowledgments	xxix
Early Unpublished Poems
The Bird and Stone	1	(1)
The Concert	2	(1)
Conquest	2	(1)
Oxford City Wall	3	(1)
San Francisco Night Windows	4	(1)
Poems 1922-1943
The Fierce Horsemen	5	(1)
Wild Oats	5	(1)
Death Mask of a Young Man
The Mouse	6	(1)
The Moon	6	(1)
Portraits of Three Ladies	7	(1)
Alf Burt, Tenant Farmer	8	(1)
The Wrestling Match	9	(2)
from Thirty-Six Poems
The Return: An Elegy	11	(2)
Kentucky Mountain Farm
Rebuke of the Rocks	13	(1)
At the Hour of the Breaking of the Rocks	14	(1)
History Among the Rocks	14	(1)
Watershed	15	(1)
The Return	16	(1)
Pondy Woods	16	(2)
Eidolon	18	(1)
History	19	(2)
Letter from a Coward to a Hero	21	(2)
Late Subterfuge	23	(1)
Ransom	23	(1)
To a Friend Parting	24	(1)
So Frost Astounds	24	(1)
Cold Colloquy	25	(1)
The Garden	25	(1)
To a Face in a Crowd	26	(3)
from Eleven Poems on the Same Theme
Bearded Oaks	29	(1)
Picnic Remembered	30	(1)
Crime	31	(1)
Original Sin: A Short Story	32	(1)
End of Season	33	(1)
Revelation	34	(1)
Pursuit	35	(1)
Love's Parable	36	(2)
Terror	38	(3)
from Selected Poems 1923-1943
The Ballad of Billie Potts	41	(11)
Mexico is a Foreign Country: Four Studies in Naturalism
Butterflies Over the Map	52	(1)
The World Comes Galloping: A True Story	52	(1)
Small Soldiers with Drum in Large Landscape	53	(1)
The Mango on the Mango Tree	54	(3)
from Brother to Dragons
Jefferson's Opening Monologue	57	(3)
The annus mirabilis	60	(1)
The Murder of John	61	(3)
Jefferson on the Aftermath	64	(2)
John's Lament	66	(1)
The Recognition of Complicity	66	(1)
from Promises
To a Little Girl, One Year Old, in a Ruined Fortress
Sirocco	67	(1)
Gull's Cry	67	(1)
The Child Next Door	68	(1)
The Flower	69	(2)
Colder Fire	71	(2)
Promises
What Was the Promise That Smiled from the Maples at Evening?	73	(1)
Court-martial	74	(3)
School Lesson Based on Word of Tragic Death of Entire Gillum Family	77	(1)
Summer Storm (Circa 1916), and God's Grace	78	(2)
Founding Fathers, Nineteenth-Century Style, Southeast U. S. A.	80	(1)
Infant Boy at Midcentury	81	(1)
When the Century Dragged	81	(1)
Modification of Landscape	82	(1)
Brightness of Distance	83	(1)
Dragon Country: To Jacob Boehme	83	(2)
Ballad of a Sweet Dream of Peace	85	(1)
And Don't Forget Your Corset Cover, Either	85	(1)
Keepsakes	85	(1)
Go It, Granny---Go It, Hog!	86	(1)
Friends of the Family, or Bowling a Sticky Cricket	87	(1)
You Never Knew Her Either, Though You Thought You Did	87	(1)
I Guess You Ought to Know Who You Are	88	(1)
Rumor Unverified Stop Can You Confirm Stop	88	(1)
Lullaby: A Motion like Sleep	88	(3)
from You, Emperors, and Others
Two Pieces after Suetonius
Apology for Domitian	91	(1)
Tiberius on Capri	92	(1)
Mortmain
After Night Flight Son Reaches Bedside of Already Unconscious Father, Whose Right Hand Lifts in a Spasmodic Gesture, as Though Trying to Make Contact: 1955	93	(1)
A Dead Language: Circa 1885	94	(1)
Fox-fire: 1956	94	(1)
In the Turpitude of Time: n.d.	95	(1)
A Vision: Circa 1880	96	(1)
Some Quiet, Plain Poems
Ornithology in a World of Flux	97	(1)
Holly and Hickory	97	(1)
The Well House	97	(1)
In Moonlight, Somewhere, They Are Singing	98	(1)
Debate: Question, Quarry, Dream	99	(1)
Two Studies in Idealism: Short Survey of American, and Human, History
Bear Track Plantation: Shortly after Shiloh	99	(1)
Harvard'61: Battle Fatigue	100	(3)
from Tale of Time
Tale of Time
What Happened	103	(1)
The Mad Druggist	104	(1)
Answer Yes or No	105	(1)
The Interim	105	(4)
What Were You Thinking, Dear Mother?	109	(1)
Insomnia	109	(3)
Homage to Emerson, On Night Flight to New York
His Smile	112	(1)
The Wart	113	(1)
The Spider	113	(1)
One Drunk Allegory	114	(1)
Multiplication Table	115	(1)
Wind	115	(1)
Does the Wild Rose?	116	(1)
from Incarnations
Island of Summer
What Day Is	117	(1)
Where the Slow Fig's Purple Sloth	118	(1)
Natural History	118	(1)
Riddle in the Garden	119	(1)
Paul Valery Stood on the Cliff And Confronted the Furious Energies of Nature	120	(1)
Treasure Hunt	121	(1)
Myth on Mediterranean Beach: Aphrodite as Logos	121	(3)
The Ivy	124	(1)
Where Purples Now the Fig	124	(1)
The Red Mullet	124	(1)
A Place Where Nothing Is	125	(1)
Masts at Dawn	126	(1)
The Leaf	127	(3)
Audubon: A Vision
Audubon: A Vision
Was Not the Lost Dauphin	130	(1)
The Dream He Never Knew the End Of	131	(6)
We Are Only Ourselves	137	(1)
The Sign Whereby He Knew	137	(2)
The Sound of That Wind	139	(3)
Love and Knowledge	142	(1)
Tell Me a Story	142	(3)
from Or Else
The Nature of a Mirror	145	(1)
Natural History	145	(1)
Time as Hypnosis	146	(1)
Blow, West Wind	147	(1)
Interjection #1: Caveat	148	(1)
I Am Dreaming of a White Christmas: The Natural History of a Vision	149	(7)
Interjection #2: I Know a Place Where All is Real	156	(1)
Chain Saw at Dawn in Vermont In Time of Drouth	156	(2)
Small White House	158	(1)
Forever O'Clock	158	(2)
Rattlesnake Country	160	(4)
Homage to Theodore Dreiser: Psychological Profile	164	(1)
Flaubert In Egypt	165	(2)
Vision Under the October Mountain: A Love Poem	167	(1)
Stargazing	168	(1)
Little Boy and Lost Shoe	168	(1)
Composition in Gold and Red-Gold	169	(1)
There's a Grandfather's Clock in the Hall	170	(1)
Reading Late at Night, Thermometer Falling	171	(5)
Folly on Royal Street before the Raw Face of God	176	(2)
Sunset Walk in Thaw-Time in Vermont	178	(2)
Birth of Love	180	(1)
A Problem in Spatial Composition	181	(2)
from Can I See Arcturus From Where I Stand?
A Way to Love God	183	(1)
Evening Hawk	184	(1)
Answer to Prayer	185	(1)
Paradox	186	(1)
Midnight Outcry	186	(1)
Old Nigger on One-Mule Cart Encountered Late at Night When Driving Home From Party in the Back Country	187	(4)
from Now and Then
American Portrait: Old Style	191	(3)
Boy Wandering in Simms' Valley	194	(1)
Orphanage Boy	195	(1)
Red-Tail Hawk and Pyre of Youth	196	(4)
Youth Stares at Minoan Sunset	200	(1)
Ah, Anima!	200	(1)
Unless	201	(1)
Not Quite Like a Top	202	(1)
Waiting	203	(1)
The Mission	204	(1)
When the Tooth Cracks---Zing!	205	(1)
Love Recognized	206	(1)
How to Tell a Love Story	206	(1)
Little Black Heart of the Telephone	207	(1)
Last Laugh	208	(1)
Heat Lightning	209	(1)
Inevitable Frontier	210	(2)
Heart of the Backlog	212	(1)
Diver	213	(1)
Rather Like a Dream	214	(1)
Heart of Autumn	215	(2)
from Being Here
Speleology	217	(1)
When Life Begins	218	(1)
Grackles, Goodbye	219	(1)
Youthful Truth-Seeker, Half-Naked, at Night, Running down Beach South of San Francisco	220	(1)
Snowshoeing Back to Camp in Gloaming	221	(2)
Sila	223	(3)
Vision	226	(1)
Part of What Might Have Been a Short Story, Almost Forgotten	227	(2)
Cocktail Party	229	(1)
The Cross	230	(1)
Language Barrier	231	(1)
Antinomy: Time and What Happened	232	(1)
Auto-da-fe	233	(2)
Passers-By on Snowy Night	235	(2)
from Rumor Verified
Chthonian Revelation: A Myth	237	(1)
Looking Northward, Aegeanward: Nestlings on Seacliff	238	(1)
Going West	239	(2)
Rumor Verified	241	(1)
Mountain Mystery	241	(2)
Vermont Ballad: Change of Season	243	(1)
Dead Horse in Field	244	(1)
The Corner of the Eye	245	(1)
What Voice at Moth-Hour	246	(1)
Another Dimension	246	(1)
English Cocker: Old and Blind	247	(1)
Have You Ever Eaten Stars?	248	(1)
Afterward	249	(1)
Fear and Trembling	250	(1)
from Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce
Little Bear Paws and Joseph's Surrender	251	(5)
Joseph at Grant's Funeral	256	(3)
from Altitudes and Extensions
Three Darknesses	259	(2)
Mortal Limit	261	(1)
Immortality Over the Dakotas	261	(1)
Arizona Midnight	262	(1)
Hope	262	(1)
New Dawn
Explosion: Sequence and Simultaneity	263	(1)
Goodbye to Tinian	263	(1)
Take-off: Tinian Island	264	(1)
Mystic Name	265	(1)
When?	266	(1)
Iwo Jima	267	(1)
Self and Non-Self	267	(1)
Dawn	268	(1)
The Approach	268	(1)
What That Is	268	(1)
Like Lead	269	(1)
Manic Atmosphere	269	(1)
Triumphal Beauty	269	(1)
Home	270	(1)
Sleep	270	(1)
True Love	270	(1)
Last Walk of Season	271	(1)
Last Meeting	272	(1)
Muted Music	273	(1)
Why Boy Came to Lonely Place	274	(1)
Youthful Picnic Long Ago: Sad Ballad on Box	275	(1)
Last Night Train	276	(1)
Question at Cliff-Thrust	277	(2)
Index of Titles and First Lines	279