Robert Penn Warren Robert Penn Warren, born in Guthrie, Kentucky in 1905, was one of the twentieth century’s most eminent American writers. He was a distinguished novelist and poet, literary critic, essayist, short story writer, and coeditor of numerous textbooks. He also a founding editor of The Southern Review, a journal of literary criticism and political thought. The primary influences on Robert Warren’s career as a poet were probably his Kentucky boyhood, and his …showed first 75 words of 1016 total…

…showed last 75 words of 1016 total…Warren said: "I’m a naturalist. I don’t believe in God. But I want to find meaning in life. I refuse to believe it’s merely a dreary sequence of events. So I write stories and poetry. My work is my testimony . . . I want to give myself in sacrifice of some sort. To participate in the common body of human life . . . my poetry lets me do that, but that sounds so trite to say."