[What think you I have] | Whitman Archive

Whitman Archive Title: [What think you I have]
Whitman Archive ID: uva.00338
Repository: Catalog of the Walt Whitman Literary Manuscripts at the Clifton Waller Barrett Library of American Literature, Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library, University of Virginia
Folder: 50-51
Date: 1857-1859
Genre: poetry
Physical Description: 1 leaf, 8.5 x 9 cm pasted to 6.5 x 9 cm, handwritten
View Images: 1 | 2
Content: On a composite leaf of white wove paper consisting of two sections (8.5 x 9 and 6.5 x 9 cm) pasted together. Both sections are in black ink but, as Bowers notes, the lower verses were inscribed using a darker, thicker pen; the upper section is unrevised, but the lower section bears several alterations in the original ink. Pinholes at top of both sections and in the current center. Whitman numbered the page 9, in pencil, in the lower-left corner. Originally the sixth section of the sequence "Live Oak, with Moss," this poem was revised to form section 32 of "Calamus" in 1860, and in 1867 was retitled "What Think You I Take My Pen in Hand?"