Robert Penn Warren
From Philosopedia
Robert Penn Warren (24 April 1905 - 15 September 1989)
Penn was a Kentucky-born poet, novelist, and literary critic, one of the founders of The New Criticism. His All the King's Men (1946) became his best-known work, and he won two Pulitzer Prizes for his poetry.
Hoping to obtain his comments about humanism, Warren was contacted at a time that he was dying of bone cancer. He was a descendent of the Quaker William Penn's family. But America's first Poet Laureate's specific views on classical philosophy were not easily located, nor details about his membership in organized religious churches. Warren Allen Smith wrote to him, and the letter he received back from Mrs. Warren gives one glimpse of the plight of the intellectual during his final year of life:
