SOURCE: Rocks, James E. “Warren's ‘Blackberry Winter’: A Reading.” University of Mississippi Studies in English 1 (1980): 97-105.

In the following essay, Rocks finds parallels between Warren's “Blackberry Winter,” his novel All the King's Men, and the author's essay on Samuel Taylor Coleridge's poem “The Ancient Mariner.”

Robert Penn Warren wrote “Blackberry Winter” shortly after he completed All the King's Men and “A Poem of Pure Imagination: an Experiment in Reading,” the long essay on The Ancient Mariner; these three works, written during 1945 and 1946, are notable examples of their respective genres and reveal Warren's varied literary talents. That “Blackberry Winter” was written soon after the novel and essay suggests that it might be read critically in the light of the two earlier works. It is unlikely that they influenced the short story in any definite way, but the essay on Coleridge and All the King's Men do foreshadow some of...