Brother to Dragons: A Tale in Verse and Voices

by Robert Penn Warren

Overview

The significantly revised version of Brother to Dragons appeared in 1979, twenty-six years after the original. It is, Warren wrote, “in some important senses, a new work.” Told in the distinct voices of characters long dead and now gathered at an unspecified place and time, the poem recalls events leading to and resulting from the 1811 murder of a young slave by Thomas Jefferson’s nephew. “R.P.W.” is the narrator of the versified tale, whose poignant ending brings not only reconciliation among the ghostly figures but healing for Warren’s persona as well.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780807121238
Publisher:	Louisiana State University Press
Publication date:	10/01/1996
Series:	Voices of the South
Edition description:	revised edition
Pages:	148
Sales rank:	1,022,140
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.40(d)

About the Author

Robert Penn Warren (1905–1989) was born in Guthrie, Kentucky, and attended Vanderbilt University, where he became a member of the Fugitive movement. An acclaimed novelist, poet, critic, and teacher, the author of dozens of books, he was a man of letters in the truest sense. He was the only writer ever to receive Pulitzer Prizes in both fiction and poetry, and in 1985 he was named the first U.S. Poet Laureate.

Editorial Reviews

Reading Brother to Dragons is a startling experience in complexity: the bear’s claws drip both honey and blood.

Sewanee Review

Warren does seem to me the best poet we have now, and the enormous improvement in the poem’s rhetorical force is evident upon almost every page.

The New Republic - Harold Bloom