Content:
Manuscript of poetic lines unpublished in Whitman's lifetime. Resemblances to passages in the preface to the 1855
Leaves of Grass
are perhaps evidence that these notes constitute draft material for that edition. Another possibility is that these notes represent an attempt to recast ideas from the preface into poetry—a process that Whitman used successfully to create several new poems for the second edition of 1856. The note at the top of the manuscript lends credence to the second theory, as it follows the characteristic title structure unique to the second edition, although Whitman never published a poem under the title "Poem of Existence."
