Content:
Whitman's copy of John G. C. Brainard's
Occasional
Pieces of Poetry
(1825), many pages of which bear the poet's
handwriting. Whitman appears to have used the volume as a notebook of
sorts, for while some of the writing seems to be related to Brainard's
text most of it does not. Among the handwritten notes are several sets
of ideas for poems that were never published and phrases that also
appear in Whitman's personal correspondence. Some of these are phrases
that Whitman inscribed in the copy of
Complete
Poems & Prose
(1888) that he gave to Horace
Traubel. On other pages are words from his letter to Anne Gilchrist of
November 11,
1871. These were perhaps copied into the Brainard volume as
he worked to write a poem in Gilchrist's honor, though they did not make
it into "Going Somewhere," the poetic
tribute that Whitman published in the November
1887 issue of
Lippincott's
Magazine
(without individual title, but in a group of four
poems collectively labelled "November
Boughs"). A draft of "Going
Somewhere" appears elsewhere in this volume. Also
present is a draft of "The Dismantled
Ship," which was first published in the
New York Herald
on February 23,
1888. Both poems were later included in
November Boughs
(1888) and in
subsequent printings of
Leaves of Grass.
Only those pages with Whitman's handwritten notes are linked from this
record. For a more complete discussion of this item, see Nicole Gray,
"Walt Whitman's Marginalia as Occasional
Practice,"
The Papers of the Bibliographical Society of
America
107 (December 2013),
467–494.
Content:
Proof of a collection of four poems ("You Lingering Sparse Leaves of Me,"
"'Going Somewhere,'"
"After the Supper and
Talk," and "Not
Meagre Latent Boughs Alone") under the general title "November Boughs." This
proof is made by pasting together proofs of each poem in the order
desired.
Content:
Proofs of a collection of four poems ("You Lingering Sparse Leaves of Me,"
"'Going Somewhere,'"
"After the Supper and
Talk," and "Not
Meagre Latent Boughs Alone") under the general title "November Boughs."
Content:
Clipping from a newspaper of four Whitman poems: "You Lingering Sparse Leaves
of Me,"
"'Going Somewhere,'"
"After the Supper and
Talk," and "Not
Meagre Latent Boughs Alone." At the top is the title "November Boughs." At
the bottom of the clipping is written, in Whitman's hand, "1887." The poems
were published first in
Lippincott's Magazine
, November,
1887.
Content:
Signed draft, with several corrections and instructions to the printer, of "'Going Somewhere'," which was published in
Lippincott's Magazine
in November 1887. It was reprinted in
November Boughs
(1888) and in the "Sands at Seventy" annex of
Leaves of Grass
(1891–92).
Content:
This is a manuscript of the poem, "'Going Somewhere,'" which was one of four poems published under the collective title "November
Boughs," in
Lippincott's Magazine
in November 1887.
"'Going Somewhere'"
was later reprinted in the "Sands of Seventy" annex to the 1888 printing of
Leaves of Grass
.
