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Whitman Archive Title: undulating
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Whitman Archive ID: nyp.00116
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Repository: Catalog of the Walt Whitman Literary Manuscripts in The Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature, The New York Public Library
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Repository Title: undulating swiftly merging from womb to birth
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Date: Between 1850 and 1855
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Genre: poetry
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Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
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View Images:
1
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Content:
Whitman probably drafted this manuscript in the early 1850s as he was composing the first (1855) edition of
Leaves of Grass
. Language in the manuscript is similar to lines that appeared in the fifth poem in that edition, later titled "I Sing the Body Electric." The discussion of the speed of the stars in this manuscript bears some resemblance to lines in the poem ultimately titled "Song of Myself." For further discussion of the relationship between this manuscript and the 1855
Leaves of Grass
, see Kenneth M. Price, "The Lost Negress of 'Song of Myself' and the Jolly Young Wenches of Civil War Washington," in
Leaves of Grass: The Sesquicentennial Essays
, ed. Susan Belasco, Ed Folsom, and Kenneth M. Price (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2007), 229–30. The manuscript has been pasted down, so an image of the reverse is not currently available.
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