TOP103-DES100
This Old Poem #103:
The Poets Laureate Special Edition #11:
Robert Penn
Warren’s Evening Hawk
Copyright © by Dan Schneider, 11/13/04
Robert Penn
Warren may be just about the most feted writer to ever appear in the TOP series.
He won 2 Pulitzer Prizes for poetry, another for fiction, dozens of others back
when such awards actually, occasionally, went to good writers- + he also served
as the American Poet Laureate from 1986-1987. &, in truth, unlike many of
the other Southern poets of his heyday- collectively called The Fugitive
poets (after a magazine of that name that published Southern poets) RPW was
actually a good poet- occasionally very good.
Here’s the
dread online bio/blurb:
Robert Penn Warren was born in Guthrie, Todd County, Kentucky, on April
24, 1905. He was the oldest of three children; others being Mary, the middle
child, and Thomas, the youngest. His parents were Robert Franklin Warren,
a proprietor and banker, and Anna Ruth Penn Warren, a schoolteacher. In the fall
of 1911 he entered the Guthrie School from which he graduated at age 15. He did
not then enter college as his mother felt he was too young and went instead, in
September, 1920, to Clarksville High School, Clarksville, Montgomery County,
Tennessee, graduating after the full school year. In the spring of 1921 he
suffered an injury to his left eye from a rock throwing incident perpetrated by
his younger brother. The injury eventually led to removal of the eye. During the
summer of 1921, he spent six weeks in Citizens Military Training Corp, Fort
Knox, Kentucky, where he published his first poem, "Prophecy", in The
Messkit. He earlier had obtained an appointment to the United States Naval
Academy but because of the eye the appointment was cancelled and in the fall of
1921 he entered Vanderbilt University at age 16.
While at
Vanderbilt he came under the tutelage of some of the foremost teachers in
literature such as Allen Tate, John Crowe Ransom, and Andrew Lytle, and became
the youngest member of the group of Southern poets called the Fugitives, which
included John Crowe Ransom, Allen Tate, Donald Davidson, and Merrill Moore.
Warren's first poems were published in The Fugitive, a magazine which the
group published from 1922 to 1925. The Fugitives were advocates of the rural
Southern agrarian tradition and based their poetry and critical perspective on
classical aesthetic ideals. From 1925 to 1927, Warren was a teaching fellow at
The University of California, where he earned a master's degree. He studied at
Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar and returned to the United States in 1930. He taught
at Vanderbilt, Louisiana State, The University of Minnesota, and Yale
University. With Cleanth Brooks, he wrote Understanding Poetry (1938), a
textbook which has widely influenced the study of poetry at the college level in
America. In August, 1925 he entered the University of California as a graduate
student and teaching assistant. Here he met his first wife, Emma "Cinina"
Brescia. In 1927 he received his M.A. from University of California and, in the
fall, entered Yale University on fellowship. In October, 1928 he entered New
College at Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar receiving his B.Litt. in the spring of
1930.
He secretly
married Emma Brescia in the summer of 1929, a marriage that was to end on June
28, 1951.On December 7, 1952, he married Eleanor Clark. This marriage produced
two children, Rosanna Phelps Warren and Gabriel Penn Warren.
Warren was
a poet, critic, novelist, and teacher. He taught at Vanderbilt University,
Nashville, Tennessee, Southwestern College, Memphis, Tennessee, University of
Minnesota, Yale University, and Louisiana State University. While at LSU he
founded and edited, along with Cleanth Brooks and Charles W. Pipkin, the
literary quarterly, The Southern Review. As a poet, he was appointed the
nation's first Poet Laureate, February 26, 1986. He published sixteen volumes of
poetry and two---Promises: Poems, 1954-1956 and Now and Then: Poems,
1976-1978---won Pulitzer Prizes. Warren published ten novels. One novel, All
the King's Men, won a Pulitzer Prize. Two novels, All the King's Men and
Band of Angels were made into movies. In addition he published a book of
short stories, two selections of critical essays, a biography, three historical
essays, a study of Melville, a critical book on Dreiser, a study of
Whittier, and two studies of race relations in America. As of this writing, he
is the only author to have won the Pulitzer for both fiction and poetry.
Other
honors include Bollingen Prize, National Medal for Literature, and Presidential
Medal of Freedom. Warren's first published novel was Night Rider,
Houghton, (1939) and was about the tobacco war (1905-1908) between independent
tobacco growers in Kentucky and large tobacco companies. His last published
novel was A Place to Come To, Random House, (1977) which is, to a
certain extent, autobiographical.
Along with Cleanth Brooks he collaborated to write the
text books, Understanding Poetry, Holt, (1938), 4th edition,
(1976) and Understanding Fiction, Crofts, (1943), 2nd
Edition, Appleton-Century-Crofts, (1959). He was one of the leading
representatives of the New Criticism and these works helped revolutionize the
teaching of literature by bringing the New Criticism into general practice in
America's college classrooms.
From the 1950's until his death September 15, 1989, from
cancer, Warren lived in Connecticut and at his summer home in Vermont. He is
buried at Stratton, Vermont, and, at his request, a memorial marker is situated
in the Warren family gravesite in Guthrie, Kentucky.
Enough pandering. On to the poem in question:
Evening
Hawk
From plane of
light to plane, wings dipping through
The head of each stalk is heavy with the gold of our error.
Long
now,
If there were no wind we might, we think, hear
This is a
poem that is not bad (there, I hope that I’ve satisfied those who say I
only pick obviously bad poems to rip!)- but it has an almost leaden feel of
Classicism- too many forced capital T Times, & ultradramatic
modifiers- tumultuous, guttural, steel-edge, crashless, heavy, unforgiven,
ancient, immense. Ok, we get the Ozymandian overtones! That said, some need to
remain to give the last line its sting, BUT there needs to be more simple
description. As the canard goes- show, don’t tell.
I’ll show
you….what I mean:
Evening
Hawk
From plane of
light to plane, wings dipping through
Look! Look! he is climbing the last
light
The last thrush is still, the last bat
If there were no wind we might, we think, hear
The basic difference is that I have removed the reverberating VOICE OF
DOOM from behind the poem. It now is tighter, & less trite. As comparison,
just look at this similar poem RPW penned & compare it to the original of Evening
Hawk.
Mortal Limit
I
saw the hawk ride updraft in the sunset over Wyoming.
There--west--were the Tetons. Snow-peaks
would soon be
Or, having tasted that atmosphere's thinness, does it
The breath of earth? Of rock? Of
rot? Of other such
Note how this poem is much more ‘show’ than ‘tell’. I knew he had
it in him!
Final Score: (1-100):
Robert Penn
Warren’s Evening Hawk:
75
TOP’s
Evening Hawk: 85
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