Reading bios of Robert Penn Warren makes me think about how small and insignificant my own attempts at writing are. It's like knowing a person who is attractive, kind, successful and wealthy. You are happy for them, but you also hate their guts just a little bit for being so perfect.
During his years as a student Warren spent time at Vanderbilt, University of California Berkeley, Yale Universty and the New College, Oxford in England as a Rhodes Scholar. C'mon Warren, dude, you are making everyone else on the planet look bad. He spent much of his time at these various schools in various poetry groups and societies and became as well known for his poetry as he would for his novels.
In an interesting flip-flop, there is evidence that Warren spent his early years as a segragationist, but over time became a strong proponent of racial integration, publishing interviews with important civil rights leaders, including Malcolm X and MLK.
His best known work, and the work of his that I am in the process of reading, is All the King's Men, for which he won a Pulitzer in 1947. This work follows the political career of Willie Stark, inspiried heavily by the real-life Governer of Louisiana from 1928-1932, Huey Long. Warren was able to observe Long closely while a professor at LSU during the height of Long's political popularity and subsequent assassination.
Warren is the only person to have won Pulitzer Prizes in both ficton and poetry. He won twice in poetry for his collections entitled "Promises: Poems 1954-1956" (1958) and Now and Then (1979). He went on to be honored with the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Carter, was named first U.S. Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry and was awarded the National Medal of Arts in 1987.
...what a loser.
Oh, and once I got an A in our 10th grade poetry assignment. Check and Mate.
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