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In Future Leaves of Grass

  • Whitman Archive Title: In Future Leaves of Grass
  • Whitman Archive ID: med.00784
  • Repository: Catalog of Unlocated Walt Whitman Manuscripts
  • Date: 1855–1871
  • Genre: prose
  • Physical Description: number of leaves unknown, handwritten
  • View Images: currently unavailable
  • Content: Notes on a future edition of Leaves of Grass in which Whitman insists that the "divine style" is one without ornament. In the preface to the 1855 edition of Leaves of Grass , Whitman writes about literary ornaments, concluding that "most works are most beautiful without ornament." Whitman reworked some of these ideas on ornament and they appear in the poem, "Suggestions," which initially appeared in Leaves of Grass (1860) as "Says." This poem was retained in Leaves of Grass until 1872 and thereafter was excluded. This manuscript is known only from a transcription published by Richard Maurice Bucke in Notes and Fragments (London, Ontario: A. Talbot & Co., printers, 1899), 69.
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