Understanding

poetry cleanth brooks robert penn warren pdf

Want more? Advanced embedding details, examples, and help! Want more? Advanced embedding details, examples, and help! Cleanth Brooks was born in Murray, Kentucky on October 16, 1906. He was educated at Vanderbilt, Tulane, and Oxford universities. From 1932 to 1947, he taught English at Louisiana State University and then moved on to
Yale University. At Yale, he helped to articulate the principles of New Criticism, which dominated literary studies in the 1940s and 1950s. He coedited the journal Southern Review with Robert Penn Warren. He also wrote several titles in collaboration with Warren, including Understanding Poetry and Understanding Fiction. A third work
Understanding Drama was written in collaboration with Robert Heilman. His other works included The Well Wrought Urn: Studies in the Structure of Poetry and Modern Poetry and the Tradition. He died on May 10, 1994. Robert Penn Warren, the first Poet Laureate of the United States, was an unusually versatile writer who tried his hand at almost
every kind of literature. In all of these forms, he achieved recognition and distinction, but it is as a poet, critic, and novelist that he was most widely known.
Writing almost always about his native South, Warren produced 10 novels and a collection of short stories, The Circus in the Attic and Other Stories (1948). By far the most successful of his novels is All the King's Men (1946), the story of a southern politician and demagogue named Willie Stark, which Warren based on the rise and fall of Huey Long.
Warren was considered one of the most influential of the New Critics, whose influence on the teaching of literature in American schools and universities during the late 1940s and 1950s could scarcely be overestimated. Because All the King's Men seemed to be the very epitome of what a good work of literature should be in New Critical terms---a
complicated but highly readable narrative filled with irony and ambiguity---the novel came to be used widely in courses on modern fiction. It won both the Pulitzer Prize and the Southern Authors Award in 1947. Warren's other novels are disappointing by comparison. Following the success of All the King's Men, however, Warren seemed to turn to
more loosely told stories about dramatic and romantic subjects, such as the interracial theme of Band of Angels (1955) or the natural catastrophes that serve as the crisis background for The Cave (1959) and Flood: A Romance of Our Time (1964). Wilderness: A Tale of the Civil War (1961) is an allegory of a man's spiritual quest for truth about himself
and the world. Meet Me in the Green Glen (1971), the story of a tragic love affair, seemed to mark a return to the tighter structure and more complex artistry of Warren's earlier novels, but A Place to Come To (1977), his last novel, in which an elderly and renowned scholar who seems to owe much to Warren himself looks back on his family's past in
an effort to find the meaning of his life, struck some reviewers as a confused and tired work. Sometime midway through his career as a novelist it is as if Warren stopped thinking of himself as a southern writer in the tradition of William Faulkner and turned instead to Thomas Wolfe for inspiration. Although in retrospect that switch must be regretted,
no one can deny the immense influence of Robert Penn Warren on modern letters. Warren's poetry is intellectual, rich in powerful images, and has its roots in the pre-Civil War South. He continued to write impressive poetry almost until the time of his death. Want more? Advanced embedding details, examples, and help! Want more? Advanced
embedding details, examples, and help! You're Reading a Free Preview Pages 5 to 8 are not shown in this preview. Want more? Advanced embedding details, examples, and help! From Understanding Poetry, 4th Edition Ed. Cleanth Brooks and Robert Penn Warren Our national strength matters, but the spirit which informs and controls our strength
matters just as much. This was the special significance of Robert Frost. He brought an unsparing instinct for reality to bear on the platitudes and pieties of society. His sense of the human tragedy fortified him against self-deception and easy consolation. "I have been" he wrote, "one acquainted with the night." And because he knew the midnight as
well as the high noon, because he understood the ordeal as well as the triumph of the human spirit, he gave his age strength with which to overcome despair. At bottom, he held a deep faith in the spirit of man, and it is hardly an accident that Robert Frost coupled poetry and power, for he saw poetry as the means of saving power from itself. When
power leads men towards arrogance, poetry reminds him of his limitations. When power narrows the areas of man's concern, poetry reminds him of the richness and diversity of his existence. When power corrupts, poetry cleanses. For art establishes the basic human truth which must serve as the touchstone of our judgment. Listen to speech The
artist, however faithful to his personal vision of reality, becomes the last champion of the individual mind and sensibility against an intrusive society and an officious state. The great artist is thus a solitary figure. He has, as Frost said, a lover's quarrel with the world. In pursuing his perceptions of reality, he must often sail against the currents of his
time.
This is not a popular role. If Robert Frost was much honored in his lifetime, it was because a good many preferred to ignore his darker truths. Yet in retrospect, we see how the artist's fidelity has strengthened the fibre of our national life. If sometimes our great artists have been the most critical of our society, it is because their sensitivity and their
concern for justice, which must motivate any true artist, makes him aware that our Nation falls short of its highest potential. I see little of more importance to the future of our country and our civilization than full recognition of the place of the artist. If art is to nourish the roots of our culture, society must set the artist free to follow his vision
wherever it takes him. We must never forget that art is not a form of propaganda; it is a form of truth. And as Mr. MacLeish once remarked of poets, there is nothing worse for our trade than to be in style. In free society art is not a weapon and it does not belong to the spheres of polemic and ideology. Artists are not engineers of the soul. It may be
different elsewhere. But democratic society--in it, the highest duty of the writer, the composer, the artist is to remain true to himself and to let the chips fall where they may. In serving his vision of the truth, the artist best serves his nation. And the nation which disdains the mission of art invites the fate of Robert Frost's hired man, the fate of having
"nothing to look backward to with pride, and nothing to look forward to with hope." I look forward to a great future for America, a future in which our country will match its military strength with our moral restraint, its wealth with our wisdom, its power with our purpose.
I look forward to an America which will not be afraid of grace and beauty, which will protect the beauty of our natural environment, which will preserve the great old American houses and squares and parks of our national past, and which will build handsome and balanced cities for our future. I look forward to an America which will reward
achievement in the arts as we reward achievement in business or statecraft.

I look forward to an America which will steadily raise the standards of artistic accomplishment and which will steadily enlarge cultural opportunities for all of our citizens. And I look forward to an America which commands respect throughout the world not only for its strength but for its civilization as well. And I look forward to a world which will be
safe not only for democracy and diversity but also for personal distinction. Robert Frost was often skeptical about projects for human improvement, yet I do not think he would disdain this hope. As he wrote during the uncertain days of the Second War: Take human nature altogether since time began . . . And it must be a little more in favor of man,
Say a fraction of one percent at the very least . . . Our hold on this planet wouldn't have so increased. Because of Mr. Frost's life and work, because of the life and work of this college, our hold on this planet has increased. Text and recording courtesy of the John F. Kennedy Library and the U.S. National Archives. The placement of the We at the end
of lines imitates the movement of seven pool players who would step up to the table to take their turns after the previous player has shot. In addition, by placing the We at the end of the line, Gwendolyn Brooks focuses the reader's... Start your 48-hour free trial to unlock this answer and thousands more. Enjoy eNotes ad-free and cancel anytime. Get
48 Hours Free Access Already a member? Log in here. The placement of the We at the end of lines imitates the movement of seven pool players who would step up to the table to take their turns after the previous player has shot. In addition, by placing the We at the end of the line, Gwendolyn Brooks focuses the reader's attention on this first person
pronoun as an isolated word, rather than as the subject of a sentence. In this way, there is a boasting mood created. In addition to this boasting mood, Ms. Brooks purposely omits the predicate of the first sentence. With this omission and the careful selection of words, therefore, she sensitively suggests both their language and their view of the
world. The rhythm of the lines is off-beat much like that of jazz, while the truncated sentences indicate the shortened lives of the males who have dropped out of school and turned to criminal activity. Brooks wants those who read this poem to understand that the males who choose this kind of life find themselves at the end of many lines. ....We Thin
gin. We Jazz June. We Die soon. The seven pool players at the "Golden Shovel" are suggestively collecting "gold" for a short time; however, with their fast paced lives that are involved in illegal activity, the "golden" life will be replaced by the "shovel" of death. Approved by eNotes Editorial Team eNotes.com will help you with any book or any question.
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