The poet laureate

Robert Penn Warren mastered verse, fiction

April 24, 1998
Web posted at: 5:00 p.m. EST (2200 GMT)

(CNN) -- Robert Penn Warren, the multi-Pulitzer Prize-winning writer and one of America's foremost poets, was born on April 24, 1905, in Guthrie, Kentucky.

Warren established himself as a force in American letters early in his writing career, winning acclaim for his poetry in the southern "Fugitive" magazine, published from 1922-1925.

Later volumes of his poetry, "Promises" (1957), and "Now and Then" (1979) won Pulitzers, and in 1986 Warren was named the first poet laureate of the United States.

Warren also succeeded in creating one of the classics of American fiction when he wrote "All the King's Men," a story of political power and corruption. The main character's life resembles that of Huey Long, Louisiana's populist governor from 1928-1932. The book, published in 1946, also won Warren a Pulitzer.

Warren died of cancer in 1989.

Related stories:

• This year's Pulitzer's

Related sites:

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• The Academy of American Poets
• The Pulitzer Prize
• History of Huey Long

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