Brother to Dragons - (Voices of the South) by Robert Penn Warren (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

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.

From the Back Cover

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.

Review Quotes

[Warren] has brought to bear all his advances and innovations of the past two decades and produced a masterwork. . . . Brother to Dragons is now the major twentieth-century American achievement in the long poem, without rival in the grandeur of its theme or the brilliance of its execution.-- "Library Journal"

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.--Harold Bloom "The New Republic"

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.