SOURCE: Stitt, Peter. “Interview with Robert Penn Warren.” In The World's Hieroglyphic Beauty: Five American Poets, pp. 241-58. Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 1985.

In the following interview, conducted in 1977, Warren discusses his formative influences, his association with the Fugitive group, the means and development of his poetic composition, and the nature of his perception of the world as a poet.

[Stitt:] You entered Vanderbilt at an early age, which leads me to think that you grew up in a home where the life of the mind was fully lived. Is that so?

[Warren:] Well, both my father and my maternal grandfather had books everywhere. I've got a lot of my father's books right over there. I recently reread Cooper for the first time since I was a boy, using my father's copies. And each book had the date he finished reading it—1890, 1891, and so on. I spent...