Robert Penn Warren '51MAHon (1905-1989). Warren, who briefly attended graduate school at Yale, taught English at the university from 1961 to 1973. With Yale professor Cleanth Brooks, he coauthored Understanding Poetry (1938) and Understanding Fiction (1943); they became widely used college texts and were highly influential in establishing the New Criticism as the dominant approach to literary criticism.

Warren twice served as poet laureate of the United States (1944-45 and 1986-87). He received the Pulitzer Prize in fiction in 1947 for All the King's Men, a novel about political power and corruption, inspired by the life of Louisiana governor Huey P. Long; and the Pulitzer for poetry in 1958 and 1979. A commemorative issued in 2005 marked the 100th anniversary of Warren’s birth.