Distinguished novelist, poet, and educator Robert "Red" Penn Warren (1905-1989) was born on this day in Guthrie, Kentucky. At age 15, he lost the use of one eye when his brother accidentally hit him with a rock.

Called a "genuinely good man" by his biographer Joseph Blotner, Warren graduated from Yale and was an Oxford Rhodes Scholar. He once said: "You don't choose a story, it chooses you. You get together with that story somehow... You're stuck with it."

With a passion for writing about the Deep South, Warren won his first of three Pulitzer Prizes in 1947 for his masterpiece, All the King's Men, a riveting morality tale of Southern politician Willie Stark. "Without (Louisiana Governor) Huey Long," Warren said, "I wouldn't have written it."

A respected teacher at major universities throughout his career, His textbook, Understanding Poetry (1938) set the academic standard.

He founded the literary quarterly, The Southern Review at Louisiana State University to further examine and celebrate the nuances of American literature.

Awarded the Pulitzer twice for poetry, in 1957 and 1979, he became America's first Poet Laureate in 1986.

"The poem is a little myth of man’s capacity of making life meaningful," he said.

Take delight in telling your story.