Criticism > Poetry > Warren, Robert Penn - Stephen Yenser (review date 1976)

Warren, Robert Penn - Stephen Yenser (review date 1976)

Stephen Yenser (review date 1976)

SOURCE: Yenser, Stephen. “Timepiece.” Poetry 128, no. 6 (September 1976): 349-54.

[In the following review, Yenser considers the enigmatic language, gritty tone, and thematic sweep of Warren's collection Or Else.]

Sometimes it is the way the tone changes and sometimes the way the syntax explicates itself and often the way the figures follow—but throughout his recent book Robert Penn Warren keeps the reader just off balance. The conclusion of the first poem, “The Nature of a Mirror” (which might have been subtitled And Vice Versa, it so neatly compacts the now proverbial dictum into a tautology), will exemplify a part of what I mean:

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