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Whitman Archive Title: whale—the sperm
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Whitman Archive ID: loc.07550
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Repository: Catalog of the Walt Whitman Literary Manuscripts in The Charles E. Feinberg Collection of the Papers of Walt Whitman, 1839-1919, Library of Congress, Washington, DC.
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Box: 40
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Folder: The voice of Walt Whitman
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Series: Notes and Notebooks
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Date: about 1860
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Genre: poetry
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Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
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Content:
One leaf made by pasting together two scraps of pink paper, probably
wrappers from the 1855 edition of
Leaves of Grass.
This portion of the manuscript contains several fragmentary lines written in pencil and describing a whale hunt. The lines are probably related to lines on the same topic in "A Song of Joys," first published as "Poem of Joys" in the 1860 edition of
Leaves of Grass.
In the 1867 edition the poem was divided into numbered sections and retitled "Poems of Joy," before resuming its original title in the
Passage to India
section of the 1871–72 edition. It took its final title in the 1881–82 edition. This scrap is attached to another scrap (loc.06005) that contains a title ("Poem of the Trainer") written in ink. On the reverse side of the leaf (loc.06006) are approximately four lines, written and revised in ink, that may be related to the poem "Year of Meteors. (1859–1860)."
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