But why should I lie here longer? I am not dead yet … And the world’s way is yet long to go, And I love the world even in my anger, And love is a hard thing to outgrow. — Robert Penn Warren, from “American Portrait: Old Style,” Now and Then: Poems, 1976-1978 (Random House,… Continue reading Robert Penn Warren
Accept these images for what they are— Out of the past a fragile element Of substance into accident. I would speak honestly and of a full heart; I would speak surely for the tale is short, And the soul’s remorseless catalogue Assumes its quick and piteous sum. — Robert Penn Warren, from “San Francisco Night… Continue reading Robert Penn Warren
Waters, hypnotic, long after moonset, murmur Under your window, and Time Is only a shade on the underside of the beech-leaf Which, upward, reflects a tiny refulgence of stars. What can you dream to make Time real again? I have read in a book that dream is the mother of memory, And if there’s no… Continue reading Robert Penn Warren
Never expect to be able to will a poem into existence. It must happen to you because You are what you are– With all your defects. —Robert Penn Warren, from “A Few Axioms for a Young Man,” Uncollected Poems 1943-1989, The Collected Poems of Robert Penn Warren. (Louisiana State University Press, 1998)
The Vale of Soul-Making 