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" Traces the evolution of our first poet laureate's distinctive stance toward the American experiment in democracy, showing how Warren sought to balance off the claims of self and society in the New World."

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Remember the Alamo! is the acclaimed classic accounts of one of the most thrilling moments in the history of the United States frontier. The battle for the Alamo was an epic event in the fight for Texas independence from Mexico. Davy Crockett, Colonel Jim Bowie and Colonel Travis are just three of the legendary and colorful heroes whose courageous and doomed defense of the Alamo against an overwhelming Mexican army led by General Santa Anna earned them immortality. Their valiant stand and death inspired the rallying cry, 'Remember the Alamo! that inspired Texans to continue their struggle and ultimate win their independence from Mexico. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Even Pulitzer Prize-Winners Write Less than Steller
I'm not sure if I got what I paid for. I picked up this book as a quick read for a brief introduction to the Alamo and got exactly that; however, I was disappointed to find out the book reads at a third grade level with below-caliber writing from Robert Penn Warren. Because the book was originally published pre-Civil Rights Movement, the book reeks (especially at its beginning) of anti-Native American sentiment (still portrayed as savages and uncivilized) and occasionally dipping into the anti-Mexican (I guess this one is obvious because it was the Americans versus them). If it weren't scribed by Warren, this book would have been lost a long time ago. I wouldn't even suggest giving this to a child to read because its view points are very biased. Luckily there are better written and researched books about the Alamo.

Juvenile and probably not accurate
I picked up this little volume,written by Robert Penn Warren, because I really liked "All the King's Men" and much of Warren's poetry."Remember the Alamo!", however, reads more like a kiddie history of the battle from the view point of the late 1950s.It is an OK read, although, there are some glaring inaccuracies due to Warren using second-hand information (like the escape of Rose).This will never take the place of Walter Lord's superior "A Time to Stand." If you have sixth or eighth graders at home, it might be a nice intro to the battle, but most adults (I suspect) would expect a better performance from a writer of Warren's cailber.[To the publishers--it would be nice, in future editions, if you would reset the several spelling typos found in the book.] ... Read more

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Despite nearly universal critical acclaim for Robert Penn Warren's later poetry, much about this large body of work remains unexplored, especially the psychological sources of these poems' remarkable energy. In this groundbreaking work, Warren scholar Joseph R. Millichap takes advantage of current research on developmental psychology, gerontology, and end-of-life studies to offer provocative new readings of Warren's later poems, which he defines as those published after Audubon: A Vision (1969). In these often intricate poems, Millichap sees something like an autobiographical epic focused on the process of aging, the inevitability of death, and the possibility of transcendence. Thus Warren's later poetry reviews an individual life seen whole, contemplates mortality and dissolution, and aspires to the literary sublime.

Millichap locates the beginning of Warren's late period in the extraordinary collection Or Else: Poem/Poems 1968-1974, basing his contention on the book's complex, indeed obsessive sequencing of new, previously published, and previously collected poems unified by themes of time, memory, age, and death. Millichap offers innovative readings of Or Else and Warren's five other late gatherings of poems--Can I See Arcturus from Where I Stand?: Poems 1975; Now and Then: Poems 1976-1978, winner of the Pulitzer Prize; Being Here: Poetry 1977-1980; Rumor Verified: Poems 1979-1980; and Altitudes and Extensions 1980-1984.

Among the autobiographical elements Millichap brings into his careful readings are Warren's loneliness in these later years, especially after the deaths of family members and friends; his alternating feelings of personal satisfaction and emptiness toward his literary achievements; and his sense of the power, and at times the impotence, of memory. Millichap's analysis explores how Warren often returned to images and themes of his earlier poems, especially those involving youth and midlife, with the new perspective given by advancing age and time's passage. Millichap also relates Warren's work to that of other poets who have dealt profoundly with memory and age, including Robert Frost, T. S. Eliot, Thomas Hardy, and, at times, John Milton, William Wordsworth, and the whole English and American nineteenth-century Romantic tradition.

An epilogue traces Warren's changing reputation as a poet from the publication of his last volume in 1985 through his death in 1989 and the centennial of his birth in 2005, concluding persuasively that the finest of all of Warren's literary efforts can be found in his later poetry, concerned as it is with the work of aging and the quest for transcendence.

... Read more

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Robert Penn Warren, America's first Poet Laureate,three-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize, founder of the New Criticism,and one of the most prolific American poets of the twentieth century,wrote more about race than perhaps any other white literary figure ofhis generation. His was a crucial voice speaking to other whitesoutherners fearful of the impact of integration on their way oflife. Tracing connections between his changing views on racialpolitics and his varying poetic theories and themes, Anthony Szczesiuloffers a new, revisionary reading of Warren's diverse and extensivecanon of poetry.

Szczesiul delineates the political and ideological implications ofWarren's evolving aesthetic, revealing that his poetry was in anintensive and ongoing dialogue with its changing social and historicalcontexts. Politically, Warren made the dramatic transition from asegregationist to an integrationist position. Poetically, his careersuccessfully bridges the modern and postmodern eras of 20th-centuryAmerican poetry. Szczesiul demonstrates that Warren's work evolved notsimply as a natural consequence of artistic maturity and developmentbut through difficult negotiations with issues of self and identity,politics and aesthetics, individual will and social change, and raceand cultural pluralism. He maintains that Warren's aesthetic conflictsbecome especially apparent when we consider his poetry alongside hisracial politics.

Szczesiul is the first to thoroughly trace the ways in which Warren's changing thoughts on race influenced his aesthetic thinking, and vice versa. His frank approach to this inflammatory subject makes considerable use of unpublished archival materials, from which Warren emerges as an extremely complex figure with great contemporary relevance. ... Read more

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"This is Robert Penn Warren's best book. . . . 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."-Randall Jarrell, New York Times Book Review 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, this long 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 tale, whose poignant ending brings not only reconciliation among the ghostly figures but healing for Warren's persona as well. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Marvelous blend of history and artistry
In Brother to Dragons, Robert Penn Warren, former poet laureate and twice winner of the Pulitzer, combined the historical elements of the New Madrid earthquake and the murder of a slave by two of Thomas Jefferson's nephews with his love of poetry. This book has various "voices" relating the brutal events in verse, but history is only a vehicle for exploring the nature of evil and Jefferson's dream of the perfectability of mankind.

This is a marvelous rather experimental volume; it is both novel, play, and poem. It is grim; it is disturbing; it is absolutely wonderful. I highly recommend this work. ... Read more

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Portrait of the tormented liberator by America's first poet laureate. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

Part of the Problem
While one may appreciate the literary contributions of Robert Penn Warren overall, surely this early work is an unfortunate part of the problem that the 20th century view of Brown has been so warped and skewed.Warren not only sustained the regional biases of his background, but he did no original research and largely appropriated the problematic but unquestioned "facts" of biographer Oswald G. Villard, whose "definitive" 1910 work questionably presents Brown as a kind of principled murderer.Warren found that an easy thesis to turn his way.The bottom line is that this book offers no original research, only an interpretation that says more about the author and his times and prejudices than about the subject.The quality of the writing can be otherwise judged by literary scholars, but as a biographer of Brown, this is not a book I ever have reason to reach for. It's only important to RPW's career and is recommended for those wishing to study the author's life and times.However it is largely irrelevant to any serious biographical study of Brown and no one interested in learning about the abolitionist should start or finish with this book.

Non-essential for historical study
As a John Brown scholar and biographer, I have had to get a handle on which biographies are useful and relevant to my research.While one may appreciate an author's style, such as the case of Robert Penn Warren, it is all too apparent that his work lacks any biographical significance as a work of history.RPW contributed nothing new to the research; instead he appropriated the worst elements of Oswald G. Villard's thesis, and otherwise framed it in his cultural and ideological prejudice as a southerner of the early 20th century.Villard himself, though a liberal civil rights activist, was prejudiced against Brown because he was an extreme pacifist and the grandson of abolitionist Wm. Lloyd Garrison, and likely resented how Brown stole the thunder from his hard-working grandpa.His view of Brown as a well-meaning murderer is hardly trustworthy, yet it has been put to good use by many anti-Brown writers, esp. those writing with a southern ax to grind--from RPW to Otto Scott.The fact that C. Vann Woodward wrote the preface to this edition of RPW's bio is all the more interesting, since the former was one of the key mid-20th century scholars in skewing Brown's historical reputation.

There are many books on John Brown, and a number of them are worth purchasing if you want to learn about him.However, this work by RPW is better borrowed from the library or scanned over a cup of coffee at B&N.It offers nothing of real historical value, except to the whining, bitter progeny of the South who have yet to own up to the fact that their forebears not only lost the war, but lost it for all the wrong reasons.Historically speaking, I give it one star only because I cannot give it anything less.

And make no mistake, reader.There is a definite connection between the willingness of the "majority" population to acknowledge the immensity of the CRIME of slavery and the general unwillingness of the same population to give John Brown the salutation that he deserves, instead of endlessly comparing him to terrorists and psychos.

Good story-telling, but not to be used for history
For the past year I have been engaged in a lengthy research project on John Brown and his biographers.Robert Penn Warren's John Brown: The Making of a Martyr was written when Warren was just 24 years old, and, although it demonstrates the wonderful literary ability Warren would become famous for, the book should not be used as history; Warren's anti-Brown sentiments are obvious; his tone his extremely condescending, as he take numerous snipes at Brown throughout.Warren criticizes the work of previous Brown biographers, such as Oswald Garrison Villard, but that does not stop him from using Villard as his main source, even copying some of his words nearly verbatim.Warren does make some good points, though, like how Brown created his own martyrdom, and his prose is eloquent.Many readers go for this book because of how well told it is, but for the best, most complete, accurate, unbiased, detailed biography, read Stephen B. Oates' To Purge This Land With Blood.When it comes to research, leave this one alone.

Criminal crowned martyr
The Harpers Ferry raid was the ember that ignited the Civil War. It was also part of a conspiracy, hidden in history almost as much as it was at the time, involving wealthy, prominant Northerners. Among them were Stoweand even Fredrick Douglas. Brown himself was a horsethief, a murderer, anda meglamaniac. Among the evidence found on his person was the constitutionof the "new republic" he would usher in after Southern whites hadbeen slaughtered by his army of freed slaves, naming himself as the newprovisional president. This well researched book so completely debunksBrown as anything but a traiterous, intolerant tyrant that it is amazingthat even today he can be viewed any other way. This book will raise yourawareness to a brand new level, almost as much as it raises your bloodpressure. ... Read more

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In these two essays, one of America’s most honored writers fastens on the interrelation of American democracy and poetry and the concept of selfhood vital to each. “I really don’t want to make a noise like a pundit,” Mr. Warren declares, “What I do want to do is to return us—and myself most of all—to a scrutiny of our own experience of our own world.” Indeed, Democracy and Poetry offers one of the most pertinent and strongly personal meditations on our condition to have appeared in recent letters.

Our native “poetry,” that is, literature and art, in general, is a social document, is “diagnostic,” and has often been a corrosive criticism of our democracy, Mr. Warren argues. Persuasively, and movingly, he shows that all of “art” and all that goes into the making of democracy require a free and responsible self. Yet the American experience has been one of the decay of the notion of self. Our astounding success jeopardized what we promised to create—the free man. For a century and a half the conception of the self has been dwindling, separating itself from traditional values, moral identity, and a secure relation with community. Lonely heroes in a bankrupt civilization, then protest, despair, aimlessness, and violence, have marked our literature.

The anguish of Robert Penn Warren’s own poetic vision of art and democracy is soothed only by his belief that poetry—the making of art can nourish and at least do something toward the rescue of democracy; he shows how art can be- come a healer, can be “therapeutic.” In the face of disintegrative forces set loose in a business and technetronic society, it is poetry that affirms the notion of the self. It is a model of the organized self, an emblem of the struggle for the achieving self, and of the self in a community. More and more as our modern technetronic society races toward the abolition of the self, and diverges from a culture created to enhance the notion of selfhood, poetry becomes indispensable.

Compelling, resonant, memorable, Democracy and Poetry is a major testament not only to the vitality of poetry, but also to a faith in democracy.

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Customer Reviews (1)

Interesting
The collection of Porters stories reveals he own life as well. "The Jilting of Granny Whetherall," "Maria Concepcion," and "The Martyr," all express the pain and hard times that Porterherself has gone through. ... Read more