Robert Penn Warren Oral History Project

Robert Penn Warren (1905--1989), a native of Guthrie, Kentucky, became the first official poet laureate of the United States in 1986. He won the Pulitzer Prize three times: for his novel All the King's Men in 1947, for Promises: Poems 1954-1956 in 1957, and for Now and Then: Poems 1976-1978 in 1979. He taught at several universities, including Yale, Louisiana State, and the University of Minnesota, and was an essayist, editor, and critic. This project contains interviews with Warren and his friends, relatives, and colleagues, including Saul Bellow, Cleanth Brooks, James Dickey, and William Styron. They discuss Warren family history; Guthrie at the turn of the century; Warren's childhood; his educational experiences; his early interest in writing; his writing style; the intellectual development of his writing; the influence of William Wordsworth, William Blake, Thomas Hardy, and other writers; the Southern Review; the Fugitives; Eleanor Warren; Sergeant York; Warren's suicide attempt; and many of Warren's works, such as All the King's Men, Selected Poems, Brother to Dragons, At Heaven's Gate, The Cave, Billy Potts, Promises, Audubon, Night Rider, and World Enough and Time.