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3 reviews
Robert Penn Warren

University Press of Kentucky, 2006

Complex Characters, Complex Book, Complex Ideas
Here's a book that is becoming more and more rare... a book about complex people with complex motives. Warren's poetic novel is wonderful to read just for the phrasing at times, but the characters, their history, their thoughts and actions, and their interactions are what really brings this to the top of my short list. It's a book for a book group. So many ideas so close to the surface, ...

Understanding Poetry

4 reviews
Cleanth Brooks, Robert Penn Warren

Wadsworth Publishing, 1976

The right book at the right time.
For most of my life, I hated poetry. One year, I had a great English teacher who really showed me what poetry was all about and got me interested. This book was just what I needed. I bought it because it had the look of the best prose book around (Writing Prose: Techniques and Purposes, Oxford University Press). It is a great introduction to poetry. It's full of great poems. It's just great. ...

The Legacy of the Civil War

4 reviews
Robert Penn Warren

Bison Books, 1998

A miniature classic of historical interpretation
The noted poet and novelist Robert Penn Warren wrote several brilliant book-length essays on various subjects, including JEFFERSON DAVIS GETS HIS CITIZENSHIP BACK (which originally appeared in THE NEW YORKER) and INTEGRATION, but none better than this miniature classic of historical interpretation. In 1961, when LIFE magazine asked him for his thoughts on the centennial of the Civil War, he ...

Understanding Fiction (3rd Edition)

1 review
Cleanth Brooks, Robert Penn Warren

Prentice Hall, 1979

A Good Book For Understanding Formalist Criticism
I am taking a college English class which includes an introduction to literary criticism. We were not assigned this book as our textbook, but I had occasion to write an essay recently for class and referred to this book as one of my secondary sources. This book is an excellent resource book. It is very clearly written. The topics covered are "The Intention of Fiction", "How Plot Reveals", ...

Short Story Masterpieces

5 reviews
Robert Penn Warren, Albert Erskine

Dell, 1954

A Classic Anthology of Fresh and Surprising Choices
The title is no lie. These are masterpieces, one and all. The editors, Warren and Erskine, display a fine discernment in their choices. Every story is great. There isn't a single dud, not even the one by Mister Sominex himself, Henry James. And the editors didn't just round up the usual suspects - their choices are fresh and surprising. Instead of Fitzgerald's "Babylon Revisited," they give ...

Six Centuries of Great Poetry: A Stunning Collection of Classic British Poems from Chaucer to Yeats

5 reviews
Robert Penn Warren, Albert Erskine

Dell, 1992

A Bargain
You'll find all of these poems elsewhere... in thick, expensive volumes. You know who to expect here, and, depending on your knowledge of poetry, might be, as I was, pleasantly surprised and introduced to unfamiliar poets. Buy this book because you can. Read it because the poems are great. One stop shopping for all your British poetry needs? Not quite. While that fellow Anonymous gets a few ...

A Place To Come Home To
Robert Penn Warren

Random House, 1977

The Collected Poems of Robert Penn Warren

3 reviews
Robert Penn Warren, John Burt

Louisiana State University Press, 1998

Warren's poems are a triumph of the human spirit.
I find most contemporary poetic practice notable only for its miserly concern for the difficulties attendant upon the small, the domestic, the momentary--huge acreages felled only to tell us that someone built a fence in their backyard once, and their husband helped them and the bindweed grew up around it and that was symbolic of relationships enduring and such. I'm therefore ensanguined by ...

All the King's Men

176 reviews
Robert Penn Warren

Harvest Books, 1996

The Web Of Things
I put off reading this novel for almost twenty years from when it was first recommended to me for the simple reason that I dismissed as a "political" novel and, ergo, not of the first water. - How wrong can a prospective reader be?!? - To begin, this is not a "political" novel, per se, and the character of Willie Stark, as compared with the odyssey of Jack Burden, not very gripping. As another ...

All the King's Men

1 review
Robert Penn Warren

Bantam Books, 1963

All The King's Men
This is my favorite book of all times. Its sensual flow captivated me and carried me on a fascinating trip. I felt like it was a long poem and understood when I discovered Robert Warren Penn is a poet first and novelist second. The writing was the main character in the book with the story taking second place.

Night Rider (Southern Classic Series)

4 reviews
Robert Penn Warren

J.S. Sanders & Co., 1992

Sticks with you like resin from tobacco plants
Though it has now been almost 30 years since I last spent a fall afternoon cutting tobacco, spearing the stalks onto wooden staves, and hanging the staves into the curing barn, I still remember the smell of the plants, the stickiness of the resin, the glint of the cutting and spearing tools. This tenuous link to a much earlier time, the time of the tobacco wars that rocked rural Kentucky and ...

Band of Angels (Voices of the South)

6 reviews
Robert Penn Warren

Louisiana State University Press, 1994

If Scarlett O'Hara Had been a Slave
This is perhaps the best novel ever written about the Civil War and Reconstruction. Unlike Gone with the Wind, the denizens of Warren's South aren't caricatures but complex human beings. You feel the hurt and disappointment of many people, sucked into the tensions of the antebellum South, the abolitonist North, the Civil War, and Reconstruction. "Little Miss Manty" is one of the most ...

Selected Letters of Robert Penn Warren: New Beginnings and New Directions, 1953-1968 (Southern Literary ...

1 review
Robert Penn Warren

Louisiana State University Press, 2008

Excellent
This is a great collection of letters to read if you're interested in literature, history, friendship, geography, and the overall human experience. Robert Penn Warren is a giant in American literature and he had some interesting friends, as well. His explicit letters give readers insight into his close relationships with some of these friends and they also dive into the psyche of Warren himself ...

Selected Poems of Robert Penn Warren
Robert Penn Warren

Louisiana State University Press, 2001

Cleanth Brooks and Robert Penn Warren: A Literary Correspondence
Cleanth Brooks, Robert Penn Warren, ...

University of Missouri Press, 1998

James A. Grimshaw, Jr., brings together for the first time more than 350 letters exchanged by two scholars who altered the way literature is taught in this country. The selected letters focus on the development of their five major textbooks -- the rationale for selections, the details involved in obtaining permissions and preparing indexes, and the demands of meeting deadlines. More important, these letters reveal their attitudes toward ...

World Enough and Time (Voices of the South)

3 reviews
Robert Penn Warren

Louisiana State University Press, 1999

Penn Warren's Other Masterpiece
This novel is one of the big sleepers in 20th century American fiction, and adds a twin peak to Penn Warren's other novelistic masterpiece, All the King's Men. On the surface, the story traces the rise, career, love, and misadventures of Jeremiah Beaumont in the early days of Kentucky and of this republic. Simultaneously it is a meditation on the process of history, and its strangeness to the ...

The Best-Loved Short Stories of Jesse Stuart

2 reviews
Jesse Stuart

McGraw-Hill, 1982

one of the best loved authors of our times
Reading Mr Stuart's books takes me back to a simple world of my father and mother. Both were from the area and many of the charaters are real for me. I will always hope the world Mr. Stuart gave us will endure in each of us. Truly a remarable man. And one of my 3 1/2 year old grandaughters favourite sleepy time books.

At Heaven's Gate (New Directions Paperbook)
Robert Penn Warren

New Directions Publishing Corporation, 1985

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