Content:
A manuscript fragment discussing the dangers of the "whip sting ray"—much "dreaded by fishermen" in the New York area. These prose notes bear no known relationship to Whitman's published works. However, at the top of the manuscript are cancelled lines which read: "and winrows are the green backed spotted mossbonkers . . . the fishermen stand in negligent ease, poised on their strong limbs—." Whitman used these cancelled lines, in slightly revised form, in the poem that would eventually be known as "A Paumanok Picture." First published as part of "Poem of Salutation" in
Leaves of Grass
(1856), then as part of "Salut au Monde" in the 1860–1861, 1867, and 1871–1872 editions of
Leaves
; these lines were later extracted and published as a separate poem, "A Paumanok Picture," in
Leaves of Grass
(1881–82 and 1891–92). An image of the verso is unavailable.
Whitman Archive Title: [How can there be immortality]
Content:
These lines, appearing on a very small section of white laid paper cut and cropped
irregularly, bear a strong resemblance to the (eventual) second verse paragraph in
section 6 of "Starting from
Paumanok," first published in 1860 as "Proto-Leaf." The fragmentary lines on the verso
(beginning "Downward, buoyant, swif[t]"), represent a different version of a line
incorporated in the pre-1855 notebook poem "Pictures" and of one inscribed in the 1854 notebook [I
know a rich capitalist...], currently housed at the New York Public Library.
