BW17: Happy Birthday Robert Penn Warren

Robert Penn Warren

This month is National Poetry month and to help us celebrate, we are honoring the birthday of writer, essayist, and poet Robert Penn Warren. He was born April 24, 1905 and died at the age of 84 on September 15, 1989 from cancer. He wrote numerous novels including All the Kings Men and poetry including Promises: 1954-1956 and Now and Then: 1976-1978 for which he won Pulitizer prizes.  

Tell Me a Story

by 

Robert Penn Warren

[A]

Long ago, in Kentucky, I, a boy, stood

By a dirt road, in first dark, and heard

The great geese hoot northward.

I could not see them, there being no moon

And the stars sparse.  I heard them.

I did not know what was happening in my heart.

It was the season before the elderberry blooms,

Therefore they were going north.

The sound was passing northward.

[ B ]

Tell me a story.

In this century, and moment, of mania,

Tell me a story.

Make it a story of great distances, and starlight.

The name of the story will be Time,

But you must not pronounce its name.

Tell me a story of deep delight.

Learn about Robert Penn Warren through Brainpicking's Power and Tenderness: Robert Penn Warren on Democracy, Art, and the Integrity of the Self; Find out more and listen to his 1964 interviews with civil rights activists whom he interviewed for his 1965 book Who Speaks for the Negro?; and check out PBS's documentary Robert Penn Warren: A Vision which aired in 2018. 

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