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The Daily Poem

Robert Penn Warren's "Heart of Autumn"

The Daily Poem

Goldberry Studios

Education For Kids, Arts, Kids & Family

4.6729 Ratings

🗓️ 7 November 2019

⏱️ 8 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Today's poem is Robert Penn Warren's "Heart of Autumn."


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Transcript

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0:00.0

Welcome back to the Daily Poem here in the Close Freeds Podcast Network.

0:07.2

I'm David Kerriss.

0:08.8

Today's poem is by Robert Penn Warren.

0:11.1

He was an American poet, novelist, and literary critic, who lived from 1905 to 1989.

0:16.7

He won the Pulitzer Prize in 1947 for his novel All the King's Men,

0:20.1

and the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry his novel All the King's Men, and the Pulitzer Prize for

0:21.4

in 1958 and 1979, thus making him the only person to have won the Pulitzer Prize for both

0:28.4

fiction and poetry. The poem that I'm going to read today is called Heart of Autumn.

0:34.8

It goes like this.

0:40.1

Wind finds the northwest gap. Fall comes.

0:44.7

Today, under gray cloud scud and over gray wind flicker of forest, in perfect formation,

0:51.2

wild geese head for a land of warm water, the boom, the lead pellet.

0:57.7

Some crumple and air, fall. Some stagger, recover, control, then take the last glide for a far

1:04.7

glint of water. None knows what has happened. Now, today, watching how tirelessly V upon V arrows the season's logic,

1:13.4

do I know my own story? At least they know when the hour comes for the great wing beat.

1:19.5

Sky strider, star strider, they rise in the imperial utterance which cries out for distance

1:24.9

quivers in the wheeling sky. That much they know, and in their

1:29.1

nature know the path of pathlessness, with all the joy of destiny fulfilling its own name.

1:34.8

I have known time and distance, but not why I am here. Path of logic, path of folly, all the same.

1:43.5

And I stand. My face lifted now skyward,

1:47.2

hearing the high beat, my arms outstretched in the tingling process of transformation.

1:52.6

And soon tough legs with folded feet trail in the sounding vacuum of passage.

...

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