"I know that any discussion of the relation of this poem to its historical materials is, in one perspective, irrelevant to its value; and it could be totally accurate as history and still not worth a dime as a poem. I am trying to write a poem, not a history, and therefore have no compunction about tampering with non-essential facts. But poetry is more than fantasy and is committed to the obligation of trying to say something, however obliquely, about the human condition. Therefore, a poem dealing with history is no more at liberty to violate what the writer takes to be the spirit of his history than it is at liberty to violate what he takes to be the nature of the human heart. What he takes those things to be is, of course, his ultimate gamble."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Foreword, Brother to Dragons: A Tale in Verse and Voices — A New Version (1979)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Robert_Penn_Warren
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Robert Penn Warren
Robert Penn Warren (April 24 1905 – September 15 1989) was an American poet, novelist, and literary critic, and one of the founders of New Criticism. He was also a charter member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers. He received the 1947 Pulitzer Prize for the Novel All the King's Men (1946) and in 1957 and 1979, the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. He is the only person to have won Pulitzer Prizes for both fiction and poetry.
38 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Robert Penn Warren →
Related Quotes
"A young man’s ambition — to get along in the world and make a place for himself — half your life goes that way, till …"
"Storytelling and copulation are the two chief forms of amusement in the South. They’re inexpensive and easy to procure."
"I've been to a lot of places and done a lot of things, but writing was always first. It's a kind of pain I can't do w…"
"I longed to know the world's name."
"The lack of a sense of history is the damnation of the modern world."
"In separateness only does love learn definition."
"Tell me a story. In this century, and moment, of mania, Tell me a story. Make it a story of great distances, and star…"
"I don’t expect you’ll hear me writing any poems to the greater glory of Ronald and Nancy Reagan."
"Historical sense and poetic sense should not, in the end, be contradictory, for if poetry is the little myth we make,…"
"How do poems grow? They grow out of your life."