The South as Contemporary Classicism
Robert Penn Warren was instrumental in producing the revival of Southern literature in the early parts of the twentieth century as a member of a movement that came to be known as the Fugitives. This group of writers also include John Crowe Ransom and Allen Tate and was centered around the blooming literary hotspot of Vanderbilt University in the 1920’s. In both his poetry and his prose, Warren pursued a thematic path that brought to life the people, event and geography of the rural south with a purpose perhaps more than slightly aimed toward showing that it was not just the urban centers that were capable of producing great stories. Eventually, the geography and topography of the region became such a passionate focus that the Fugitives decided to drop that moniker and instead adopt one more fitting to their classical tastes and literary architecture: The Agrarians. Through metaphor and symbolism, these writers—with Warren eventually rising to become the most influential—connected the American South to Ancient Greek through depiction of connective tissue: the beauty of pastoral verse and the abomination of a history of slavery.
"Tell me a Story"
One of the titles of—ironically—one of Warren’s shortest poems stands as an iteration of a theme he would pursue not just through content, but form. Many of his poems—including his longest and most complex works of verse—are essentially dramatic stories told in poetry rather than prose. Brother to Dragons is likely the most famous example: it is essentially a novel told through poetic form. And that that dual utilization spans outward to dozens of poems that tell stories about people like “Mister Dutcher and the Last Lynching in Gupton” while also encompassing the not-quite-strictly narrative tale encased with a more lyrical story about “Mrs. Dodd’s Daughter.” Warren is such an accomplished story-teller that though he became America’s Poet Laureate and won two Pulitzer Prizes for his works of poetry, he is almost certainly more famous for his third Pulitzer: the novel, All the King’s Men.
Self-Identity through Self-Knowledge
In the poem “Speleology” the title’s scientific name for cave exploration becomes one of the poet’s most explicit metaphors for the recurring theme of self-identity and self-knowledge which pervades through so much of his verse. The speaker in this short poem twice asks “Who am I” and it is precisely that question which dominates so much of the writer’s work. The concept of searching for one’s meaning in life within the complex context of autobiographical history, narrative storytelling and more traditionally “poetic” flights of symbolic fancy can almost be expected to rise to the surface of direct content of nearly every poem by Warren which one is likely to encounter. Warren’s insightful recognition of the degree to which Southern culture (even on the skids) informed his own identity is every bit as revealing as the extent to which he reveals how a reader’s insight into their self-identity can be nurtured, shaped and defined by reading the narrative accounts of those with completely different autobiographies to share.
