Billie Potts
“The Ballad of Billie Potts” commences with a paragraph in prose in which the poet attribute the origin of this narrative to “an old lady who was a relative of mine. The scene, according to her version, was in the section of Western Kentucky known as ’Between the Rivers,’ the region between the Cumberland and the Tennessee.” The unfortunate title character returns home following an absence of a decade in which he has become much better off financially. However, in the interim, his appearance has apparently changed to the degree that his parents do not instantly recognize him and set upon with greed in their hearts learning only after the murder whom they have killed by virtue of an identifying birthmark discovered too late.
Dr. Knox
Unlike the ironic tale of Billie Potts, the center of the narrative of “The Day Dr. Knox Did It” is not really focused on the title character. Dr. Knox is a character only through inference; his suicide—the “it” which Dr. Knox “did”—is portrayed entirely through the eyes of others: a young boy who hears the shot and his grandfather who struggles to answer the boy’s questions.
The Little Girl
The Little Girl is the central figure in five different poems collectively known as “To a Little Girl, One Year Old, in a Ruined Fortress.” The little girl who is the star of these five works of verse went on to become an award-winning poet in her right, proving perhaps that talent is occasionally inherited: the little girl is the poet’s daughter Rosanna.
George and the Lewis Brothers
Brother to Dragons is a not just a poem; it is a novel in verse. It is a complete narrative that might have been told as prose work or a dramatic play. George is a slave who is set upon by two brothers—Lilburn and Isham Lewis—and brutally murdered with a meat-ax. What gives this enigmatic work of brilliance its sheen, however, is not the character of the victim, but the man who is the uncle of the two murderers: Thomas Jefferson, third President of the United States and author of the Declaration of the Independence.
