Railsplitter

Railsplitter speaks, through poetry, in the imagined posthumous voice of Abraham Lincoln. Pulitzer finalist Maurice Manning has taken an approach both rigorous and playful, interpretive and researched, resulting in a complex extended meditation on the inner life of a major American icon. Invoking Lincoln’s apparent belief “in the value of whim and wonder,” historical narratives and philosophical ponderings alike are set to the music of lyric and the bounce of rhyme. Indeed, Railsplitter positions Lincoln—himself a poetry reader, despite his limited education—as an important influence on the American literary landscape. These poems wonder at small joys, turns of phrase, and ordinary human sorrows, while articulating with gravity the larger forces afoot—including the shame of slavery, and the responsibility to save the country from self-destruction. “An American habit is to fail / to recognize the symbolism / of what happens, even as / what happens always is also real,” Manning writes, and does his part to break this habit, looking with nuance at the simultaneous resonance of history’s real impact and the poetry it sets in motion.