Robert Penn Warren

Robert Penn Warren came to DC in 1944, to serve as U.S. Poet Laureate. He is the only person to win Pulitzer Prizes in both fiction (in 1947, for All the King’s Men) and poetry (twice, in 1958 for Promises, and 1979 for Now and Then). Other awards include the National Book Award for Poetry, a MacArthur Fellowship, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom (bestowed by President Jimmy Carter in 1980). He served as Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets from 1972 until 1988.

Early in his career, Warren was associated with the Fugitives and Southern Agrarians, although he later eschewed their defense of racial segregation and political conservatism, and became an advocate of civil rights.

His books of poems include: Brother to Dragons (1953), Incarnations (1968), Being Here (1980), and the posthumous Collected Poems of Robert Penn Warren (1998). Fiction includes: At Heaven’s Gate (1943), World Enough and Time (1950), and Meet Me in Green Glen (1971). His nonfiction includes: John Brown: The Making of a Martyr (1929), Segregation: The Inner Conflict in the South (1956), Who Speaks for the Negro? (1965), and the influential textbooks, co-edited with Cleanth Brooks, Understanding Poetry (1938) and Understanding Fiction (1943).

While living in DC, Warren worked on his renowned novel All the King’s Men, as well as editing the Quarterly Journal of Current Acquisitions for the Library of Congress. He was the first person assigned the office on the top floor at the northwest corner of the library, which was then minimally furnished. By tradition, that office continued on as the Poet Laureate’s domain.