Robert Penn Warren After Audubon

Despite nearly universal critical acclaim for Robert Penn Warren's later poetry, much about this large body of work remains unexplored, especially the psychological sources of these poems. In Robert Penn Warren after Audubon, Warren scholar Joseph R. Millichap embraces current research on developmental psychology, gerontology, and end-of-life studies to offer provocative new readings of Warren's later poems, those published after Audubon: A Vision (1969). ¶ Millichap sees something like an autobiographical epic focused on the process of aging, the inevitability of death, and the possibility of transcendence in these often intricate poems; Warren's later poetry reviews an individual life seen whole, contemplates morality and dissolution, and aspires to the literary sublime. ¶ Among the autobiographical elements Millichap identifies in his careful readings are Warren's loneliness during his later years, especially after the deaths of family members and friends; his alternating feelings of personal satisfaction and emptiness toward his literary achievements; his sense of the power; and, at times, the impotence of memory. Millichap also relates Warren's work to that of other poets who have dealt profoundly with memory and age, and concludes persuasively that the finest of all of Warren's literary efforts can be found in his works on aging and the quest for transcendence.