“He was a remarkable man, a wonderful...

“He was a remarkable man, a wonderful writer. The main thing about (Robert Penn) Warren is that he had a powerful, primitive imagination that dealt with the basics of human existence, either personal, political or religious. . . . And he did it to hell and gone. He was an all-out kind of a writer.”

--Poet and novelist James Dickey, commenting on Robert Penn Warren, the nation’s first poet laureate, who died Friday at his summer home in Stratton, Vt.