SOURCE: Ransom, John Crowe. “The Inklings of ‘Original Sin:’ Selected Poems 1923-43.” In Critical Essays on Robert Penn Warren, pp. 32-6. Boston: G. K. Hall & Co, 1981.

In the following review of Selected Poems: 1923-1943, originally published in 1944, Ransom briefly appraises the poem “Aubade for Hope” and stresses Warren's theme of Original Sin, which the critic defines as “the betrayal of our original nature that we commit in the interest of our rational evolution and progress.”

Of more than seasonal magnitude is the literary event which gives to the public the whole staple of Robert Penn Warren's poetry. For ten years my head has rung with magnificent phrases out of the five poems which he contributed to a Special Poetic Supplement in The American Review of March, 1934. I felt they must have made a great commotion (as I knew they had not) and established him at once as a...