Classic and Contemporary Poetry: Explained

David Lehman’s "In Praise of Robert Penn Warren" is a reflective and evocative tribute to Robert Penn Warren, one of the great American poets and novelists of the 20th century. The poem engages with themes of memory, experience, and the limitations of human perception, mirroring Warren’s own poetic concerns with history, morality, and the passage of time. Lehman’s approach is lyrical yet restrained, capturing the introspective and often brooding spirit of Warren’s work.

The poem opens with an invocation of deep, elemental forces: "Beyond the primitive powers of pain, of love at last / Recognized behind the windows of a departing train, helpless / To give chase." The imagery here is both personal and cinematic, evoking the experience of loss or realization that arrives too late, an idea Warren himself often explored. The departing train suggests an irrevocable moment, a recognition that comes only as something slips away. The helplessness to "give chase" reinforces the theme of human limitation—a hallmark of Warren’s poetry, where characters often struggle with fate, time, and their own moral reckonings.

As the poem progresses, it meditates on perception and the challenge of distinguishing "the proper balance between beauty and bunk." Warren’s work frequently engaged with the conflict between appearance and reality, the tension between aesthetic experience and deeper truth. The reference to "the final unterrified meeting in the dark" suggests a confrontation with mortality, an acceptance of the inevitable. Streetlamps, typically sources of clarity, are inadequate: "Beyond the power of streetlamps to illumine; to direct / Our attention to what you insist is important after all." This suggests that what truly matters—the fundamental insights of life—cannot be illuminated by artificial means. Instead, they must be wrestled with internally, much like Warren’s characters do in both his fiction and poetry.

The mention of "the daily grind / Of apologies and phone calls, unwanted, unreturned, the feigned / Enthusiasm, commercial breaks, news breaks, oaths, alarms" shifts the poem into a modern, almost cynical register. Here, Lehman highlights the distractions of contemporary life, contrasting them with the deeper, more enduring concerns Warren insisted upon. The list format, with its accumulation of mundane obligations, reflects a kind of suffocating routine, one that might obscure the weightier themes Warren explored—love, death, history, and the American experience.

Midway through the poem, the perspective shifts to the second person: "You know it's wisest to retain your anonymity as, distrustful / Of doctors, you wander, as though for the first time, in barefoot / Happiness over the familiar ground." This moment suggests an aging Warren, wary of authority, finding solace in nature—a motif that appears often in his work. The phrase "as though for the first time" suggests both renewal and irony: even in old age, there is still the potential for discovery, but it is tempered by experience. Warren, who wrote extensively about the American South and the landscape’s moral weight, often depicted nature as both restorative and impenetrable. Here, Lehman captures that duality, placing Warren in a setting that is at once familiar and strange.

The poem also explicitly acknowledges Warren’s age: "though you are now, what? / Seventy-three years old, and wonder, as though for the first time, / How brutal the light can be, though faint in the chill of dawn." This recognition of aging ties into Warren’s late-life poetry, which often reflected on the body’s decline and the relentless forward march of time. The "brutal light" suggests an uncompromising awareness of mortality, one that dawns gradually yet unavoidably.

The closing lines return to an elemental, almost mythic register: "Go ahead, ponder / The fate of innocence in a forest of fear. Gnarled / Are the roots, but you, staring, are immune to complaint, / And beyond the primitive powers of pain and lament." The "forest of fear" alludes to Warren’s recurring themes of moral reckoning and the loss of innocence, particularly in works like All the King’s Men and Brother to Dragons. The "gnarled roots" reinforce the idea of complexity, age, and endurance, suggesting that Warren, in his later years, has moved past futile grievances and into a realm of deeper understanding.

Structurally, the poem consists of long, flowing lines, with enjambment guiding the reader through its meditative progressions. This structure mirrors Warren’s own poetic tendencies, which often relied on extended, contemplative sentences that wove together personal reflection and broader philosophical concerns. Lehman also avoids strict meter or rhyme, favoring a free-verse style that allows the poem’s thought process to unfold naturally, much like Warren’s own late poetry.

Ultimately, "In Praise of Robert Penn Warren" captures the spirit of its subject by engaging with the very themes that defined Warren’s work—memory, mortality, perception, and the search for meaning. Lehman does not merely eulogize Warren; rather, he places the reader within the poet’s own worldview, where past and present blur, where the weight of experience is palpable, and where the search for truth persists beyond the limits of time.

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