Railsplitter, the seventh collection from Pulitzer Prize Finalist and Guggenheim Fellow Maurice Manning, envisions the role of poetry in the life of Abraham Lincoln. Manning, who writes each piece in Lincoln's persona, provides a lasting reflection on how poetry guided and shaped the President's mind while leading a divided nation. Equal parts prophetic and rich in both rural folklore and literary allusions-from Shakespeare, to Whitman, to Poe, to...

""Maurice Manning displays not just terrific cunning but terrific aim."--New York Times Book Review "Manning's genius-his truly staggering genius-is in his ability to put this ancient question into a true American idiom, to make this fundamental human inquiry both vividly, heartbreakingly poignant and madly, idiosyncratically his own." -Smartish Pace "He's saved himself with the most basic of things-a place, its people, and one of its songs." -Orion...