The Present State of Poetry: A Symposium: In England, in France, in the United States

Robert Penn Warren (1905-1989) was one of the preeminent authors of the twentieth century: a poet, novelist, and literary critic who was one of the founders of New Criticism. He earned a master's degree at the University of California, studied at New College, Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar; he taught at Vanderbilt, Louisiana State, the University of Minnesota, and Yale University. Warren was a charter member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers. He received the Pulitzer Prize three times, for All the King's Men (1946) and for poetry (1958 and 1979). Three years before his death, he was appointed the first poet laureate of the United States.

Herbert Read (1893-1968) was a poet, critic, captain in the British Army, and an anarchist. He argued for an organic approach to art and literature and published many critical works concerning the philosophy of art. Read was knighted in 1953 and spent his later years as a writer, teacher, and publisher.