Brother to Dragons: A Tale in Verse and Voices: A New Version

by Robert Penn Warren

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.

Genres: Poetry, Literature, Historical Fiction, American

148 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1953

About the author

Robert Penn Warren was an American poet, novelist, and literary critic and was one of the founders of New Criticism. He was also a charter member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers. He founded the literary journal The Southern Review with Cleanth Brooks in 1935. He received the 1947 Pulitzer Prize for the Novel for All the King's Men (1946) and the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1958 and 1979. He is the only person to have won Pulitzer Prizes for both fiction and poetry.

Reviews

[Jonfaith · Rating 5 out of 5]

I had long lived in the world of action and liability.
But now I passed the gate into a world

Sweeter than hope in that confirmation of late life.

RPW delivers an American Epic on Race and History, Wilderness and Civilization, and a host of other unwieldy themes. The poem concerns an event where the nephew of Thomas Jefferson literally butchered a slave in the relative wilds of Kentucky. The structure of the poem is similar to a play, think Our Town but without the ladders. It was off putting initially to have the poet present in dialogue with the personages, especially Thomas Jefferson. There’s a brilliance in handling this strange incident in light of the contemporaneous earthquake, how both represent a settling and can likely only be understood in terms of Deep Time, or outside of fleeting perspective.

[Drew Norwood · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars. This long poem is one of a kind. Penn Warren, in line with his custom, takes a true story and creates a fictional work from it. Here, the historical foundation is a brutal murder committed by one of Thomas Jefferson's nephews in 1811. What is unique about this work is that he recast the tale by recalling Thomas Jefferson, Jefferson's sister, Jefferson's nephews, Meriweather Lewis, and other characters from the dead to hold a conference amongst each other, as well as with a narrator, "R.P.W."

Since Warren has written himself into the tale, the book serves as an excellent example of how Warren views history and of his understanding of the past. The narrator, R.P.W., tellingly is given the last lines of the poem, and in those lines he reflects on the meaning of the story and the various accounts that had been offered through the pages of the book. In Warren's account, the past is never lost or meaningless. "All is redeemed in knowledge." But this knowledge never comes cheap, and "[a]ll truth is bought with blood." The book is filled with ruminations on the darkness of human nature, the fact that "history drips in the dark", and of the painful frustration of all philosophies that fail to account for the depravity of man. But it is also full of hard-earned wisdom to be gathered, and of the necessity of hope and yearning for the light, the need to "set blossom by the stone."

"We have yearned in the heart for some identification
With the glory of the human effort. We have devised
Evil in the heart, and pondered the nature of virtue.
We have stumbled into the act of justice, and caught,
Only from the tail of the eye, the flicker
Of joy, like a wing-flash in thicket."

[Andrew · Rating 4 out of 5]

a truly unique book, and one i plan to re-read maybe several times to see how it resonates differently with state of understanding. The nuance in the character interactions is incredible, and I'm not sure I caught it all the first time round. On a purely superficial level, the verse is enjoyable in its texture and word choice, and in the rich imagery of the old South in the US. Beyond that, the existential tangents from the main story line are profound and enjoyable.

"Madness is what the sane man wakes to" - RPW

[Colleen Lynch · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a fantastic read, because I love Robert Penn Warren. I'm not sure if someone would like it if they aren't a fan, because it isn't in his usual style. The whole book has a unique style of its own, hence "a tale in verse and voices" and some of the lines of this book are just, magical. I do tend to fall for the popular book with a great plot but not written well formula sometimes, but this book is one that reminds me, as it should anyone who reads it, what real writing is. I think everyone should read this book, seriously. I cannot praise it enough.

[Mark Caleb Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brother to Dragons, by Robert Penn Warren, is remarkable. I am too far gone to be objective about Warren's work. I have had a deep, soft spot for Warren since graduate school and my study of southern politics. All the King's Men may be my favorite novel. So, take my biases into account as you read.

This is not a novel, play, or poem, at least in the sense that I am used to poetry (which is limited). This is a novella-length poem that is really a conversation between many characters, including Warren himself. Everyone else involved is related to a brutal murder in 1811 Kentucky. These voices, all "dead" save Warren, unfold the story with Warren as their interrogator. The murder is a true event involving Thomas Jefferson's sister and nephews, but Warren's tale is thin on history--of which there is little to know--but thick as a meditation on the past, race, slavery, the South, and human nature.

Warren, as a man of the South, has complex, deeply nuanced views on these subjects, and the voices he inhabits, including Jefferson himself, un-peel even more layers as the story plays out. In essence, this is Warren coming to grips with slavery as a white American man. It is an effort to envision a future in light of our past, and it is unsparing. Warren challenges the very foundational myths of the American regime in a creative, moving manner. I cannot recommend this more highly, though it requires focus, especially in the first 50 pages.

Warren's language, as always, is arresting. There is a reason he remains the only person to win Pulitzer Prizes for fiction and poetry. The writing is gorgeous, horrific, sometimes simple, and sometimes dense. I could generally only read 10-15 pages at a stretch until the last 50 or so pages, which I devoured and then stared at the ceiling to process. I am still churning through it mentally, and will need to read it several more times.

I have spent the past year learning from Warren. This work was not at all on my radar, but it was a gift. What a glorious gift.

(This version of the work is from 1953. Warren published an updated version in 1979. I have not yet read that one.)

[J. Alfred · Rating 3 out of 5]

The title does not occur in the text, so we're left to infer its relevance, but the historically-grounded tale (Warren was quite a historian) of Jefferson's sister's family, who moved to rural Kentucky and went crazy to the point of torturous murder, will not leave us scrambling long for what the title means.
As a story, it's pretty good. As a poem, it's okay. As a philosophy, well, if you've thought at all about the human condition, this will not be new information.
What's most fascinating about it, to me at least, is the character of Jefferson as portrayed by Warren: that is worth considering both poetically and historically. That Warren names his glue-narrator-character R.P.W. and introduces him in the dramatis personae as "The Author of this Poem" is indicative of the level both of thought and impudence with which this text was created (both high, that is).

[Tim · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book-length poem naturally ranges on a variety of themes. Structurally it takes place in a timeless, spaceless void where the key figures involved in a heinous act attempt to explain themselves. As Warren was wont to do he burrowed down to the pith of what ontological and epistemological quandaries presented themselves as the people, from Warren himself and Thomas Jefferson and the immediate family of Jefferson's murderous nephew, all attempt the impossible task of sorting their truths from their lies and why they behaved as they did. The book presents a journey and a challenge in that it makes assertions about our common condition in life that require the reader to hold them up against his or her own life and test the validity of those assertions. It's worth the effort.

Here's one of many passages worth quoting. It deals with Warren's visit to the places where the murder in question was committed over a century earlier:

And so we passed that land and the weight of its mystery.
We passed the mystery of years and their logic,
And I have been a stranger in many nations.
I have been a stranger in my bed at night,
And with a stranger.
I have been a stranger when the waiter turned for my order.
I have been a stranger at the breaking of break.
For isolation is the common lot
Which makes all mankind one.

And there was Smithland.
No, not Sam Clemens' town now, after all.
Sure, there's the jail, courthosue, and river,
And even now it's no metropolis,
In spite of a traffic signal, red and green,
And paint on houses, and new stores,
And money jingling in the local jeans.

Who would begrudge such solvency?
And who's to blame if there's a correlation
Between it and the dark audit of blood
In some Korean bunker, at the midnight concussion?
Yes, who's to blame? For in the great bookkeeping
Of History, what ledger has balanced yet?

[Karen Michele Burns · Rating 4 out of 5]

I came across Robert Penn Warren’s Brother to Dragons: A Tale in Verse and Voices: A New Versionby happy accident. A friend and colleague has often recommended All the King’s Men and while looking into that book, I checked out the author’s other works and decided to give this extended poem a try. It was a rewarding experience. The poem tells the story of the nephews of Thomas Jefferson and is based firmly on the historical records of the sad events in Kentucky which are cited in the forward and notes for the poem provided by RPW. The poetry itself was masterful and worth the read, but I was also fascinated by a story I knew nothing about coupled with the imagined views of Thomas Jefferson, the author as narrator and parts of the more famous travels of Meriwether Lewis, another relative of Jefferson’s. It is a unique and somewhat obscure work, but recommended to others who enjoy something “off the beaten path” in their reading selections.

[Linda · Rating 4 out of 5]

I can't really think of another book like this and I'm not sure who else will want to read it, but RPW was an awesome poet/writer/thinker who saw how messed up politics/people are, despite holding out hope for humanity (like I fancy myself! ha!) This book proves all of that. His imaginings of what Thomas Jefferson would say (sounds like a $25,000 Pyramid category) plus what his kin, the murdered slave, and other surrounding characters would say, are interesting, but the most interesting bits are when a cut-to-the-bone line of poetry sums up humanity or evil or something else like that in a few brilliant words. Despite being a tale in verse, this reads pretty quickly, but don't go so fast that you miss the subtleties!

[Paul · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the book I'm writing my thesis on. Warren's poetry is often overshadowed by the juggernaut that is All the King's Men which is a great book, but Warren was, in truth, a poet--the first poet laureate in fact. This long verse-play depicts some of Jefferson's and Meriwether Lewis' relatives who move to the frontier of Kentucky, go crazy and murder a slave in a most brutal way.

[Emily · Rating 1 out of 5]

I understand that some people like this sort of stuff. But I couldn't seem to enjoy this book at all. Granted, it was for a Lit. class and I had to speed read to get it done by the deadline; but even then it left a lot to be desired. Maybe I will read it one day when I am not rushed for time. I don't see that happening any time soon, though.

[Matt Sellers · Rating 5 out of 5]

Randall Jarrell said it best: "Cruel sometimes, crude sometimes, obsessed sometimes, the book is always extraordinary: it does know, and knows sadly and tenderly even. It is, in short, an event, a great one."

[Robert Monk · Rating 5 out of 5]

Impossible to find in bookstores.

[Enzo G · Rating 5 out of 5]

This poem is the anti-Hamilton. 10/10.