Poetry Criticism | Warren, Robert Penn - Laurence Lieberman (review date 1981)

Laurence Lieberman (review date 1981)

SOURCE: Lieberman, Laurence. “The Glacier's Offspring: A Reading of Robert Penn Warren's New Poetry.” The American Poetry Review 10, no. 2 (March 1981): 6-8.

[In the following review of Being Here: Poetry 1977-1980, Lieberman analyzes Warren's poem “Globe of Gneiss,” commenting on its experimental prosody and thematic grandeur.]

At seventy-five, Robert Penn Warren has lost none of his lifelong zest for strenuous nature hikes. In his new book of poems, Being Here, Warren's many excursions through woods, up hillside, across beach and rocky shoreline, run a gamut from sheer relish in the physical exertion—with lapses of muscle to explore a wealth of sensory perceptions—to profound meditations on the nature of Time and “Pure Being.” By a succession of happy accidents, Warren's cross-country rambles lead him to encounters with living or non-living beings that amazingly...

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