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Whitman Archive Title: Poem of the Trainer
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Whitman Archive ID: loc.06005
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Repository: Catalog of the Walt Whitman Literary Manuscripts in The Charles E. Feinberg Collection of the Papers of Walt Whitman, 1839-1919, Library of Congress, Washington, DC.
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Box: 40
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Folder: The voice of Walt Whitman
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Series: Notes and Notebooks
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Date: Betwee late 1855 and 1860
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Genre: poetry
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Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
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Content:
One leaf made by pasting together two scraps of pink paper, probably
wrappers from the 1855 edition of
Leaves of Grass.
This portion of the manuscript contains the title "Poem of the Trainer," written in ink. This title is not known to have any relationship to Whitman's published
works. Whitman's titling of poems as "Poem of..." began with the 1856 edition of
Leaves
and was retained, although to a lesser extent, in future editions. Given this, and the use of the 1855 wrapper paper, this note was likely written sometime between late 1855 and 1860. This scrap is attached to another scrap (loc.07550) that contains several
fragmentary lines written in pencil describing a whale hunt, likely related to lines on the same
topic in "A Song of Joys." On the reverse of the two scraps (loc.06004) are approximately
four lines, written and revised in ink, about the 1833 Leonid meteor shower, likely related to the poem "Year
of Meteors. (1859–1860)."
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