 In an article about him in Haaretz newspaper, Dalia Karpel wrote that Penn, a contemporary of Israeli poets Avraham Shlonsky and Natan Alterman, wrote romantic love poems, conformist and non-conformist patriotic poems, political poems and lyrics that were set to music.Apart from his literary works, he was famous for his Bohemian lifestyle.A heavy smoker and drinker, who also suffered from diabetes, he saw himself as someone who could overcome the weaknesses of the body in defiance of medical science.