SOURCE: Watkins, Floyd C. “A National Poet.” Mississippi Quarterly 37, no. 2 (Spring 1984): 173-78.

In the following essay, Watkins summarizes Warren's poetry on American subjects and emphasizes Warren's depiction of the human capacity for evil in Brother to Dragons.

In a period of about four decades Robert Penn Warren has written poems about America and its history which are unmatched by the work of any other poet in quality and scope. He has created events, periods, and personages with a range from 1776 to 1976. Even in the unity of themes and methods, there is a considerable diversity of subjects and people who derive from the typical, the folk, and the historical. Many characters are based on actual Americans. Public history of one sort or another provides approximately a dozen central narratives. Persons in the daily news, some members of Warren's family, and boyhood friends in Kentucky assume significant roles and provide...