The Poetic Vision of Robert Penn Warren

Abstract

Victor Strandberg writes in The Poetic Vision of Robert Penn Warren that More than any other writer in American literature, it now appears, Warren has suffered neglect as a poet because of his greater fame as a novelist. But Neil Nakadate's new Robert Penn Warren: A Reference Guide indicates a good deal of attention has been paid Warren as if one considers the comparatively little attention any poetry receives. Of Warren, even Harold Bloom now says that he ranks with the foremost American poets of the century: Frost, Stevens, Hart Crane, Williams, Pound, Eliot.1 In spite of such significance, there are only two book-length studies of Warren's poetry, both by Strandberg. Strandberg's new study updates and narrows the focus of his A Colder Fire2 and is the only book to consider Warren's most recent work. One might well hope that the new book would enhance Warren's position as but regrettably it may not. In fact, Warren partisans may find the book cause for despair. I, of course, do not mean to psychoanalyze the poet, Strandberg says. This startling remark appears in the middle of a book which is all but pure psychological criticism. He adds, Jungian psychology should not be considered a source for Warren's poetry. Publication dates alone refute that possibility. This is disingenuous indeed. True, Jung's The Undiscovered Self was published in 1959, and Warren had been publishing for thirty years. But had not Jung begun publishing in 1902 and had not his Terry Lectures been given, in English, at Yale in 1938? I am, however, haggling with Strandberg's word source, for we are both talking about influence. Strandberg does not say that Warren cannibalized Jung, but he certainly bases his study of Warren's poetry on psychological investigation informed by Jung, Freud, and William James. His thesis is that Warren's poems divide