Content:
Notes for a poem about "a first-rate healthy Human Body," possibly related to
"I Sing the Body
Electric," which was first published as the fifth poem of the
1855
edition of
Leaves of Grass
and substantially revised (as "Poem of the Body") in 1856.
Content:
This manuscript was probably written between 1850 and 1855, when Whitman was preparing material for the first (1855) edition of
Leaves of Grass
. The ideas and language in the last section of the manuscript may relate to the first poem of that edition, eventually titled "Song of Myself." The first part of this manuscript resembles a line in the fifth poem of that edition, eventually titled "I Sing the Body Electric." The leaf looks like it may have been extracted from a notebook. On the reverse (nyp.00549) is prose writing that contains several phrases similar to some found in the poem eventually titled "Song of Myself," as well as later poems.
Whitman Archive Title: Outdoors is the best antiseptic
Content:
This prose fragment extols the virtues of outdoor living and the appeal of physical laborers who work outdoors. Similar ideas are found throughout
Leaves of Grass
. The following lines in the poem that was eventually titled "Song of Myself" echoes the first two sentences of this manuscript: "I am enamoured of growing outdoors, / Of men that live among cattle or taste of the ocean or woods, / Of the builders and steerers of ships, of the wielders of axes and mauls, of the drivers of horses" (1855, p. 21). The first part of this prose fragment also may relate to the following line from the preface to the 1855
Leaves of Grass
: "The passionate tenacity of hunters, woodmen, early risers, cultivators of gardens and orchards and fields, the love of healthy women for the manly form, seafaring persons, drivers of horses, the passion for light and the open air, all is an old varied sign of the unfailing perception of beauty and of a residence of the poetic in outdoor people" (p. v).
The transcription of the manuscript published in
Notes and Fragments
, ed. Richard Maurice Bucke (London, Ontario: A. Talbot & Co., printers, 1899), 152, includes additional text not now present in the manuscript that may also connect it to the following line in the poem eventually titled "I Sing the Body Electric": "Do you think they are not there because they are not expressed in parlors and lecture-rooms?" (1855, p. 81). Edward Grier claims that this manuscript was, at one time, pinned together with another manuscript (
Notebooks and Unpublished Prose Manuscripts
[New York: New York University Press, 1984], 1:169; see duk.00296).
Content:
Edward Grier dates this notebook before 1855, based on the pronoun revisions from third person to first person and the notebook's similarity to Whitman's early
"Talbot Wilson"
notebook (
Notebooks and Unpublished Prose Manuscripts
[New York: New York University Press, 1984], 1:102). Grier notes that a portion of this notebook (beginning "How spied the captain and sailors") describes the wreck of the ship
San Francisco
in January 1854 (1:108 n33). A note on one of the last pages of the notebook (surface 26) matches the plot of the first of four tales Whitman published as "Some Fact-Romances" in
The Aristidean
in 1845, so segments of the notebook may have been written as early as the 1840s. Lines from the notebook were used in "Song of Myself" and "A Song of the Rolling Earth," which appeared in the 1856
Leaves of Grass
. Language and ideas from the notebook also appear to have contributed to other poems and prose, including "Miracles;" the preface to the 1855
Leaves of Grass
; "The Sleepers," which first appeared as the fourth poem in the 1855
Leaves
; and "A Song of Joys," which appeared as "Poem of Joys" in the 1860 edition.
Content:
Although they are written in free verse, both the conventional nature of these lines and the handwriting suggest an early date of inscription. This draft may be a continuation of duk.00018 ("There is no word in"), suggesting it may relate to the poem eventually titled "Song of Myself." The lines, especially the first and third, also bear some resemblance to a passage of the preface to the 1855
Leaves of Grass
and to lines in what eventually became section 6 of "I Sing the Body Electric."
Content:
Early discussions of this notebook dated it in the 1840s, and the date associated with it in the Library of Congress finding aid is 1847. The cover of the notebook features a note calling it the "Earliest and Most Important Notebook of Walt Whitman." A note on leaf 27 recto includes the date April 19, 1847, and the year 1847 is listed again as part of a payment note on leaf 43 recto. More recently, however, scholars have argued that Whitman repurposed this notebook, and that most of the writing was more likely from 1853 to 1854, just before the publication of
Leaves of Grass
. Almost certainly Whitman began the notebook by keeping accounts, producing the figures that are still visible on some of the page stubs, and later returned to it to write the poetry and prose drafts. For further discussion of dating and the fascinating history of this notebook into the twentieth century, see Matt Miller,
Collage of Myself: Walt Whitman and the Making of Leaves of Grass
(Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2010), 2–8. See also Andrew C. Higgins, "Wage Slavery and the Composition of
Leaves of Grass
: The
Talbot Wilson
Notebook,"
Walt Whitman Quarterly Review
20:2 (Fall 2002), 53–77. Scholars have noted a relationship between this notebook and much of the prose and poetry that appeared in the 1855 edition of
Leaves of Grass
. See, for instance, Edward Grier,
Notebooks and Unpublished Prose Manuscripts
(New York: New York University Press, 1984), 1:53–82. The notebook was lost when Grier published his transcription (based on microfilm). The notebook features an early (if not the earliest) example of Whitman using his characteristic long poetic lines, as well as the "generic or cosmic or transcendental 'I'" that appears in
Leaves of Grass
(Grier, 1:55).
Whitman Archive Title: [How can there be immortality]
Content:
These lines, appearing on a very small section of white laid paper cut and cropped
irregularly, bear a strong resemblance to the (eventual) second verse paragraph in
section 6 of "Starting from
Paumanok," first published in 1860 as "Proto-Leaf." The fragmentary lines on the verso
(beginning "Downward, buoyant, swif[t]"), represent a different version of a line
incorporated in the pre-1855 notebook poem "Pictures" and of one inscribed in the 1854 notebook [I
know a rich capitalist...], currently housed at the New York Public Library.
Content:
Whitman probably drafted this manuscript in the early 1850s as he was composing the first (1855) edition of
Leaves of Grass
. Language in the manuscript is similar to lines that appeared in the fifth poem in that edition, later titled "I Sing the Body Electric." The discussion of the speed of the stars in this manuscript bears some resemblance to lines in the poem ultimately titled "Song of Myself." For further discussion of the relationship between this manuscript and the 1855
Leaves of Grass
, see Kenneth M. Price, "The Lost Negress of 'Song of Myself' and the Jolly Young Wenches of Civil War Washington," in
Leaves of Grass: The Sesquicentennial Essays
, ed. Susan Belasco, Ed Folsom, and Kenneth M. Price (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2007), 229–30. The manuscript has been pasted down, so an image of the reverse is not currently available.
Content:
Whitman probably drafted this manuscript between 1850 and 1855, as he was composing the first (1855) edition of
Leaves of Grass
. This list of words may have been brainstorming for lines that appeared in the first and fifth poems of that edition, eventually titled "Song of Myself" and "I Sing the Body Electric." On the reverse (nyp.00100) is a fragment related to the poem eventually titled "Who Learns My Lesson Complete?"
Content:
This manuscript is similar in subject to a line from the poem eventually titled "I Sing the Body Electric." On the back of this leaf (nyp.00079), Whitman drafted trial lines of the poem that was eventually titled "Song of Myself." Based on this and the handwriting, Edward Grier dates this manuscript to before or early in 1855 (
Notebooks and Unpublished Prose Manuscripts
[New York: New York University Press, 1984], 1:179). This manuscript is glued to another manuscript (nyp.00523) that also features lines of prose.
Content:
This manuscript was probably written between 1850 and 1855, when Whitman was preparing material for his first (1855) edition of
Leaves of Grass
. A portion of the first paragraph of the manuscript, dealing with music and its relationship to the soul, is similar to a passage in the poem eventually titled "A Song For Occupations." Other language in the manuscript is similar to the prose preface to the 1855
Leaves of Grass
and to lines from the poems that would eventually be titled "Song of Myself" and "I Sing the Body Electric."
Content:
This manuscript includes notes that anticipate the preface to the first (1855) edition of
Leaves of Grass
. Images and phrases in the second paragraph of the first leaf are reminscent of lines in both the poem eventually titled "Song of Myself" and the poem eventually titled "I Sing the Body Electric." Another line on the first leaf appeared in a slightly different form in "Poem of The Singers, and of The Words of Poems" in the 1856 edition of
Leaves
(a poem later titled "Song of the Answerer"). The stated desire for "satisfiers" and "lovers" (found here on the bottom of the second leaf) appears in "Poem of Many in One," also first published in the 1856 edition and later titled "By Blue Ontario's Shore."
Content:
Prose notes that relate to "I Sing the Body Electric," first published as the fifth poem in the 1855 edition of
Leaves of Grass
. The first line of the manuscript may relate to information Whitman used to write the article "One of the Lessons Bordering Broadway: The Egyptian Museum," published in
Life Illustrated
on December 8, 1855. This manuscript is pasted to a larger document along with another scrap that includes information used in that article. Both manuscript scraps were probably written shortly before or early in 1855, though the notes on the backing sheet to which they have been pasted may have been written at a later date. The reverse side of the leaf is part of a manuscript (duk.00066) discussing the conception of time.
Content:
On four leaves, an early version of portions of the poem ultimately titled
"This Compost,"
first printed under the title "Poem of Wonder at The Resurrection of The Wheat" in the 1856 edition of
Leaves
of Grass.
On the reverse sides of these leaves is a list of
words regarding the physical body and connected in concept to "I Sing the Body Electric,"
a poem that first appeared as the fourth poem of the 1855
Leaves of Grass.
With this
list, Whitman was gathering material for the noteworthy final section, a
paean to body parts, that he added to the poem in 1856. Glue residue
shows that these leaves were formerly pasted to two other leaves, upon which
is written a prose manuscript fragment regarding California Vigilance
Committees.
Whitman Archive Title: I subject all the teachings
Content:
Whitman used language similar to what appears in these manuscript lines in the fifth poem in the first (1855) edition of
Leaves of Grass
, eventually titled "I Sing the Body Electric," as well as in the 1856 "Poem of the Road," eventually titled "Song of the Open Road." The manuscript is written on the blank side of an 1850s tax form from the City of Williamsburgh. Scholars, following Fredson Bowers, have generally assumed that Whitman used the Williamsburgh tax forms from 1857 to 1860, while he was working at the
Brooklyn Daily Times
. The city of Williamsburgh was incorporated with Brooklyn effective January 1855, so the forms would have been obsolete after that date (
Whitman's Manuscripts: Leaves of Grass
[1860] [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1955], xli–xliii). Most of the manuscripts Whitman wrote on the tax forms can be dated to the late 1850s. Bowers also notes, however, that Whitman may have used the forms over a considerable span of time, and that "it is not impossible that Whitman had picked up these tax forms for scrap paper at Rome Brothers at some unknown date in 1854 or early 1855, or later" (xliii). At least two of the tax forms Whitman used were dated 1854 (see, for instance, "Vast national tracts" [loc.05354]), but as Edward Grier points out, this may not correspond to the date of Whitman's writing (
Notebooks and Unpublished Prose Manuscripts
[New York: New York University Press, 1984], 5:1946). Whitman may have found a stack of obsolete Williamsburgh forms in 1857 that included discarded draft forms dated earlier. The manuscript is thus difficult to date conclusively, but it was almost certainly written after 1854 and probably before 1860.
Content:
This notebook, now lost, contains much draft material used in the 1855 edition of
Leaves of Grass
, in addition to a few images and phrasings that Whitman used in the second (1856) and third (1860) editions. As the folder title indicates, the notebook is currently represented by photocopied images of each page derived, apparently, from a microfilm of the original that was made in the 1930s prior to the notebook's disappearance from the collection during World War II. As Floyd Stovall has noted, the few datable references in this notebook (e.g., the fighting at Sebastopol during the Crimean War) are to events from about 1853 to late 1854, shortly before the first publication of
Leaves of Grass
. See Stovall, "Dating Whitman's Early Notebooks,"
Studies in Bibliography
24 (1971), 197–204. See also Edward Grier,
Notebooks and Unpublished Prose Manuscripts
(New York: New York University Press, 1984), 1:138–155. Surfaces 9, 10, 54, and 55 bear passages that probably contributed to the first poem of the 1855 edition, eventually titled "Song of Myself," and other material, on surfaces 26, 46, 51, 54, and 58, is clearly linked to the evolution of that poem. A passage on surface 23 is also perhaps related to its development. Surfaces 11 and 12 both have material probably used as fodder for the poem "Song of the Answerer," first published as the seventh poem in the 1855
Leaves.
A brief passage on surface 12 possibly contributed to the poem first published in 1860 as the fourth of the "Chants Democratic" and later retitled "Our Old Feuillage." Surfaces 13 and 46 contain drafts of passages used in the second poem of 1855, later titled "A Song for Occupations." Material on surfaces 24 and 47 probably also contributed to this poem. Passages on surfaces 17, 18, 40, 42, and 45 are likely early drafts toward lines used in "Poem of the Sayers of the Words of the Earth" (1856), which later became "A Song of the Rolling Earth." Surface 18 also bears writing probably related to the twelfth and final poem of the 1855
Leaves,
later titled "Faces." On surfaces 18, 24, and 51 are lines that might represent draft material toward "I Sing the Body Electric" (first published as the fifth poem of the 1855
Leaves
). Other passages, on surfaces 47 and 55, are likely related to that poem; those on surfaces 36, 37, 44, 45, and 47 are certainly related. Ideas and images written on surfaces 20 and 46 are likely related to the poem "Song of the Open Road," which first appeared as "Poem of the Road," and a passage on surface 24 may also be related. Two passages on surface 21 were used in the tenth poem of the 1855
Leaves of Grass,
later titled "There Was a Child Went Forth." Surface 22 contains writing probably used in "Sun-Down Poem" (1856), titled "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry" in later editions. Some of the writing on surface 24 might also have contributed to the development of that poem. Another passage on surface 22, as well as passages on surfaces 26, 47, and 60, are possibly related to the 1855 Preface. A different passage on surface 60 is clearly related to the Preface, and a passage on surface 45 is likely related to it. Two of the draft lines of poetry on surface 31 were used in the untitled third poem of the "Debris" cluster in the 1860 edition of
Leaves of Grass.
This poem was retitled "Leaflets" in 1867 and dropped from subsequent editions. The writing on surface 41 contributed to the 1856 "Poem of Salutation," which was eventually titled "Salut au Monde!" The jotting at the top of surface 43 is also likely connected to this poem.
Content:
A notebook Whitman used for various purposes in the mid-1850s. Edward F.
Grier, in his edition of Whitman's
Notebooks and Unpublished Prose
Manuscripts,
6 vols. (New York: New York University Press, 1984), 1:226–243, noted that the notebook contains lines and phrases that relate to
several poems: "Song of the
Broad-Axe,"
"Crossing Brooklyn
Ferry,"
"I Sing the Body
Electric,"
"Starting from
Paumanok,"
"A Song for
Occupations,"
"By Blue Ontario's
Shore,"
"Salut au Monde!,"
"To One Shortly to
Die," and "A
Woman Waits for Me."
