Tweetspeak Poetry

  • Home
  • FREE prompts
  • National Poetry Month
  • Every Day Poems—Subscribe! ✨
  • Teaching Tools
  • Books, Etc.
  • Patron Love

Perspective: Character in the In-Between

By Megan Willome 2 Comments

sheep sunrise misty morningCharacter in the Bardo

My son and I have a joke that if he wants me to watch something that’s a bit of a stretch, all he has to say is, “Mom, it’s got great character development,” and I’m in. That’s how he got me to watch the movie Everything, Everywhere, All at Once, which is a story about character development set in a multiverse. It turns out that in-between spaces are great for exploring character, be that a modern tale about string theory or the bardo.

Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders is about the character of President Abraham Lincoln, and it is set in the bardo, a Tibetan Buddhist idea describing the state of a soul between death and rebirth. The story takes place on one night. Following the death of Lincoln’s son Willie from typhoid fever, the boy was buried in a borrowed crypt in Oak Hill Cemetery. Newspapers reported that Lincoln visited the grave during the night, and Saunders uses that fact as the jumping off point to pull off a challenge—to help us see one of America’s greatest presidents more clearly.

This novel, George Saunders’ first, won the 2017 Man Booker Prize. Saunders is also the author of several short story collections, most of which fall into the realm of speculative fiction, and a book about the techniques of Russian writers. He teaches at Syracuse University and has been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship and a MacArthur Fellowship. I like to point out that he hails from Amarillo, Texas, which is Hank the Cowdog country—very far from Georgetown, the neighborhood of Washington, D.C. where Lincoln in the Bardo takes place.

Scads of books have been written about Lincoln. In fact, Saunders quotes from many Lincoln biographies and newspaper accounts to set the stage and provide details, including, Elizabeth Hobbs Keckley’s Behind the Scenes or Thirty Years a Slave and Four Years in the White House. Saunders uses these sources like tiny links to the multiverse, presenting a plethora of Lincolns. One citation will tell us he was a good father. The next will tell us he was a terrible father. Facts blur and then enlighten. The various sources can’t even agree on the moon that fateful night — it was full … it was a crescent … it was beautiful … there was no moon.

The variety of perspectives is compounded because the cemetery is populated with a Spoon River-like cast of characters who narrate the story. (The audiobook has a cast of 166, including Saunders himself.) Lincoln does not speak, but we see him through the perspectives of the people who watch him in the graveyard that night.

Each resident of the bardo is a universe unto themselves — simultaneously appearing as the person they were and the person they are now and, as the novel unfolds, the person they are yet to be. As we see Lincoln through the eyes of Mr. Vollman and Mr. Bevins and Mrs. Hodge and Litzie and all the others, we see him more fully. I felt like I got to know him, not as a historical figure, but as a person who was changing with each turn of the page.

Mr. Thomas Havens, a Black man who gets the chance to inhabit Lincoln’s body and read his thoughts, says this about the president who would seven months later sign the Emancipation Proclamation:

He had no aversion to me, is how I might put it. Or rather, he had once had such an aversion, still bore traces of it, but in examining that aversion, pushing it into the light, had somewhat already eroded it. He was an open book, an opening book, that had just been opened up somewhat wider by sorrow…”

Sorrow opens us, if we let it. Not into a thing but into an opening. I like the idea that Lincoln’s character could grow only by dwelling for a few hours in an in-between place.

Often historians try to fix Lincoln into a box, as if he were one thing only. But he was many things, all at once. So are we all. To know character, we need more perspectives. We must hear from everyone, everywhere, to know anything.

Your Turn

1. Have you read a book set in a multiverse or other in between place?
2. What is a book about Lincoln that you found illuminating?
3. Share your June pages. Sliced, started, and abandoned are all fair game.

June’s Pages

Poetry
Bower Lodge, by Paul J. Pastor

Picture Books and Early Readers
Opal Lee and What It Means to Be Free: The True Story of the Grandmother of Juneteenth, by Alice Faye Duncan, illus. Keturah A. Bobo
Turtle Island ABC: A Gathering of Native American Symbols, by Gerald Hausman, illus. Cara and Barry Moser
I Talk Like a River, by Jordan Scott, illus. Sydney Smith
The Tempest, by William Shakespeare, adapted by Luke Paiva, illus. Roberto Irace

Middle Grade and YA
My Father’s Dragon, by Ruth Stiles Gannett, illus. Ruth Chrisman Gannett
Hatchet, by Gary Paulsen (Join us for Children’s Book Club, next Friday, July 8!)

Grownups
A Country Year: Living the Questions, by Sue Hubbell
Lincoln in the Bardo, by George Saunders
Planet Narnia: The Seven Heavens in the Imagination of C.S. Lewis, by Michael Ward

Photo by Alison Day, Creative Commons, via Flickr. Post by Megan Willome.

Browse more book reviews with Perspective

rainbow crow front cover outlined
5 star

“Megan Willome has captured the essence of crow in this delightful children’s collection. Not only do the poems introduce the reader to the unusual habits and nature of this bird, but also different forms of poetry as well.”

—Michelle Ortega, poet and children’s speech pathologist

  • Author
  • Recent Posts
Megan Willome
Megan Willome
Megan Willome is a writer, editor, and author of The Joy of Poetry: How to Keep, Save & Make Your Life With Poems and Rainbow Crow: poems in and out of form. Her day is incomplete without poetry, tea, and a walk in the dark.
Megan Willome
Latest posts by Megan Willome (see all)
  • Perspective: The Two, The Only: Calvin and Hobbes - December 16, 2022
  • Children’s Book Club: A Very Haunted Christmas - December 9, 2022
  • By Heart: ‘The night is darkening round me’ by Emily Brontë - December 2, 2022

Filed Under: A Story in Every Soul, Blog, book reviews, Perspective

Get Every Day Poems...

About Megan Willome

Megan Willome is a writer, editor, and author of The Joy of Poetry: How to Keep, Save & Make Your Life With Poems and Rainbow Crow: poems in and out of form. Her day is incomplete without poetry, tea, and a walk in the dark.

Comments

  1. Glynn says

    July 1, 2022 at 8:11 am

    I like Lincoln in the original the best. The Library of America has a two-volume set of “Lincoln’s Speeches and Writings” that is excellent. Really eye-opening for me was to read the transcripts of the Lincoln-Douglas debates of 1858 — the two men are arguing moral positions on the most contentious issue of their time, and the debate is extraordinarily similar to the arguments made on the most contentious issue of our time.

    June Reading

    Fiction
    The Lost Tales of Sir Galahad by various authors

    Mystery
    The Sign of the Tooth by Craig Stephen Copland
    The Case of the Hidden Flame by Alison Golden
    The Templeton Case by J.S. Fletcher
    The Tangled Treasure Trail by Benedict Brown
    Death by Dark Waters by Jo Allen
    A Fatal End by Faith Martin

    Poetry
    All That Will Be Known by Paul Mariani
    Full Mouth by Sara Eddy
    Tell the Bees by Sara Eddy
    Desert Songs by Yahia Lababidi

    History
    Attack at Dawn and Whip Them: The Battle of Shiloh by Gregory Mertz
    The Long Road North: A Guide to the Gettysburg Campaign 1863 by Robert Orrison & Dan Welch
    Hell Itself: The Battle of the Wilderness May 5-7, 1864 by Chris Mackowski
    Dawn of Victory: Breakthrough at Petersburg March 26-April2, 1865 by Edward Alexander

    Non-fiction
    Marking Darkness Light: The Lives and Times of John Milton by Joe Moshenska
    Dorothy and Jack: The Transforming Friendship of Dorothy Sayers and C.S. Lewis by Gina Dalfonzo

    Reply
    • Megan Willome says

      July 1, 2022 at 11:33 am

      Glynn, I don’t think I’ve read any of Lincoln in his own voice except the Gettysburg Address and the Second Inaugural.

      That looks like an interesting book on Dorothy Sayers and C.S. Lewis. I only recently realized they were contemporaries.

      Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Cute Comic

😊

The Sadbook Collections

A stick-figure human sure to capture your heart.

Take How to Read a Poem

Get the Introduction, the Billy Collins poem, and Chapter 1

get the sample now

Welcome to Tweetspeak

New to Tweetspeak Poetry? Start here, in The Mischief Café. You're a regular? Check out our April Menu.

Patron Love

❤️

Welcome a little patron love, when you help keep the world poetic.

Now a Graphic Novel!

"Stunning, heartbreaking, and relevant illustrations"

Callie Feyen, teacher

read a summary of The Yellow Wallpaper

meet The Yellow Wallpaper characters

Your Comments

  • Laurie Klein on Poems to Listen By: Black Bird Soirée 04—A Plausible Story
  • L.L. Barkat on Poems to Listen By: Black Bird Soirée 04—A Plausible Story
  • Laurie Klein on Poems to Listen By: Black Bird Soirée 04—A Plausible Story
  • Bethany on Poems to Listen By: Black Bird Soirée 04—A Plausible Story

How to Write Poetry

Featured In

We're happy to have been featured in...

The Huffington Post

The Paris Review

The New York Observer

Tumblr Book News

Stay in Touch With Us

Categories

Coloring Page Poem Printables!

Get all free coloring page poems now

Learn to Write Form Poems

How to Write an Acrostic

How to Write a Ballad

How to Write a Catalog Poem

How to Write a Ghazal

How to Write a Haiku

How to Write an Ode

How to Write a Pantoum

How to Write a Rondeau

How to Write a Sestina

How to Write a Sonnet

How to Write a Villanelle

5 FREE POETRY PROMPTS

Get 5 FREE inbox poetry prompts from the popular book How to Write a Poem

Shakespeare Resources

Poetry Classroom: Sonnet 18

Common Core Picture Poems: Sonnet 73

Sonnet 104 Annotated

Sonnet 116 Annotated

Character Analysis: Romeo and Juliet

Character Analysis: Was Hamlet Sane or Insane?

Why Does Hamlet Wait to Kill the King?

10 Fun Shakespeare Resources

About Shakespeare: Poet and Playwright

Top 10 Shakespeare Sonnets

See all 154 Shakespeare sonnets in our Shakespeare Library!

Explore Work From Black Poets

About Us

  • • A Blessing for Writers
  • • Annual Theme 2022: Perspective
  • • Annual Theme 2021: Generous
  • • Our Story
  • • Meet Our Team
  • • Literary Citizenship
  • • Poet Laura
  • • Poetry for Life: The 5 Vital Approaches
  • • T. S. Poetry Press – All Books
  • • Contact Us

Write With Us

  • • 5 FREE Poetry Prompts-Inbox Delivery
  • • 30 Days to Richer Writing Workshop
  • • How to Write Form Poems-Infographics
  • • Poetry Club Tea Date
  • • Poetry Prompts
  • • Submissions

Read With Us

  • • All Our Books
  • • Book Club
  • • Every Day Poems—Subscribe! ✨
  • • Literacy Extras
  • • Poems to Listen By: Audio Series
  • • Poet-a-Day
  • • Poets and Poems
  • • 50 States Projects
  • • Charlotte Perkins Gilman Poems Library
  • • Edgar Allan Poe Poems Arts & Experience Library
  • • William Blake Poems Arts & Experience Library
  • • William Shakespeare Sonnet Library

Celebrate With Us

  • • Poem on Your Pillow Day
  • • Poetic Earth Month
  • • Poet in a Cupcake Day
  • • Poetry at Work Day
  • • Random Acts of Poetry Day
  • • Take Your Poet to School Week
  • • Take Your Poet to Work Day

Gift Ideas

  • • Every Day Poems
  • • Our Shop
  • • Everybody Loves a Book!

Connect

  • • Donate
  • • Blog Buttons
  • • By Heart
  • • Shop for Tweetspeak Fun Stuff

Copyright © 2023 Tweetspeak Poetry · FAQ, Disclosure & Privacy Policy

We serve poetry with our cookies. Because that's the way it should be.
We serve poetry with your cookies on our website to give you the most relevant experience by remembering your preferences and repeat visits. By clicking “Accept”, you... accept the cookies with a smile.
Do not sell my personal information.
Cookie SettingsAccept
update cookie prefs

Privacy Overview

This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may affect your browsing experience.
Necessary
Always Enabled
Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. These cookies ensure basic functionalities and security features of the website, anonymously.
CookieDurationDescription
cookielawinfo-checkbox-analytics11 monthsThis cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Analytics".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-functional11 monthsThe cookie is set by GDPR cookie consent to record the user consent for the cookies in the category "Functional".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-necessary11 monthsThis cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookies is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Necessary".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-others11 monthsThis cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Other.
cookielawinfo-checkbox-performance11 monthsThis cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Performance".
viewed_cookie_policy11 monthsThe cookie is set by the GDPR Cookie Consent plugin and is used to store whether or not user has consented to the use of cookies. It does not store any personal data.
Functional
Functional cookies help to perform certain functionalities like sharing the content of the website on social media platforms, collect feedbacks, and other third-party features.
Performance
Performance cookies are used to understand and analyze the key performance indexes of the website which helps in delivering a better user experience for the visitors.
Analytics
Analytical cookies are used to understand how visitors interact with the website. These cookies help provide information on metrics the number of visitors, bounce rate, traffic source, etc.
Advertisement
Advertisement cookies are used to provide visitors with relevant ads and marketing campaigns. These cookies track visitors across websites and collect information to provide customized ads.
Others
Other uncategorized cookies are those that are being analyzed and have not been classified into a category as yet.
SAVE & ACCEPT