Robert Penn Warren’s Resolution

Robert Penn Warren’s Resolution Using the book of poems Tale of Time, and the book of poems You, Emperors, and Others I will show how Robert Penn Warren’s insight into memories, politics, corruption due to the media, religion, and isolation made his poetry a step ahead of its time. Warren himself went through drastic changes involving his views on U.S. diversity which gives him the knowledge of both southern and northern views. Warren’s ability to see social problems with diversity and understand cultural differences gave him grounds to be one of America’s great visionary thinkers; however I believe his ability to find resolution in experiences, and to use those resolutions as a way to understand what it means to be a human being the reason Robert Penn Warren is a visionary thinker. Robert Penn Warren’s book of poems titled, Tale of Time, and specifically the poem Homage to Emerson, On Night Flight to New York, shows Warren’s views about life, religion, and politics all of which he connects to Ralph Emerson’s own views. Warren never states this in his poems but Emerson is one of the central figures of the literary and philosophical groups called the Transcendentalist (Ralph). The Transcendentalist’s believed that all people and nature have a permanent goodness that has been corrupted by political parties and religion, however everyone is capable of “transcending” past physical senses and move deeper into spiritual experience using their own free will.
Warren focuses on memories and at times finds himself separated from reality throughout the poems. Each poem goes deep into the poet’s mind and he is only brought to reality by remembering his is on a plane flying at “38,000 feet”. Much like being in a dream, Warren’s memories are expressed briefly in each poem and then he is awaken to be reminded that he is on a plane, a plane which he have no control over. Warren is trying to find how his memories can give him resolution, any kind of resolution. Under Hugh