Content:
A partial draft of what appears to be a self-review of
Leaves of Grass
. Whitman published numerous anonymous self-reviews throughout his life, and this scrap contains language similar to several extant reviews, in which Whitman references his own "barbaric yawp" and makes a clear distinction between that which is new and powerful (represented by his own poetry) from that which is old and stilted (previous poetic traditions). The time and location of publication is unknown, but Edward Grier notes that the Collins steamship line, which Whitman references, ceased operating in 1858, suggesting that this is likely a review for the 1855 or 1856 edition of
Leaves
(
Notebooks and Unpublished Prose Manuscripts
[New York: New York University Press, 1984] 1:336).
