RPW Essay Contest

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Center for Robert Penn Warren Studies High School Essay Contest

The Robert Penn Warren Center at Western Kentucky University is pleased to announce an essay contest for undergraduate students (all majors welcome). We will select three winners, each of whom will receive a prize of $100. All awardees will be recognized on the Robert Penn Warren Center’s website and receive an invitation to the annual Robert Penn Warren Studies conference on Friday, April 26, 2019. In addition, all awardees will have the option to have their work uploaded to TopScholar, WKU’s online, open-access repository of scholarship and creative works.

Topic

Critically analyze and give a close reading of “Tell Me a Story,” a short poem that Warren published in 1969. How do poetic devices, such as imagery and metaphor, contribute to your understanding of meaning in the poem? 

Format

Essays should be at least 750 words long, and submitted via email to rpw.center@wku.edu by January 4, 2019. Submissions must be in Word (.doc or .docx) or Adobe Acrobat (.pdf) format.

Contact

If you have any questions, please contact Dr. Marla Zubel at rpw.center@wku.edu. 

 

Tell Me a Story

[ A ]

Long ago, in Kentucky, I, a boy, stood

By a dirt road, in first dark, and heard

The great geese hoot northward.

 

I could not see them, there being no moon

And the stars sparse.  I heard them.

 

I did not know what was happening in my heart.

 

It was the season before the elderberry blooms,

Therefore they were going north.

 

The sound was passing northward.

 

[ B ]

 

Tell me a story.

 

In this century, and moment, of mania,

Tell me a story.

 

Make it a story of great distances, and starlight.

 

The name of the story will be Time,

But you must not pronounce its name.

 

Tell me a story of deep delight.