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America needs her own poems

About This Item

  • Title: America needs her own poems
  • Date: Early 1860s
  • Creator(s): Walt Whitman
  • Whitman Archive ID: duk.00131
  • Source: Trent Collection of Whitmaniana, David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Duke University. Transcribed from digital images of the original. For a description of the editorial rationale behind our treatment of the manuscripts, see our statement of editorial policy.
  • Editorial note: This manuscript probably dates to the early 1860s, as it appears to have been inscribed after the writing on the reverse side of the leaf (duk.00795), which contains draft lines that contributed to poems first published in the 1860–1861 edition of Leaves of Grass.
  • Related Item(s):
    • On the back of the manuscript are draft lines that contributed both to the poem ultimately titled "Thoughts [Of these years I sing...]" and to "Apostroph," the opening section of "Chants Democratic and Native American." Both poems first appeared in the 1860–1861 edition of Leaves of Grass. See duk.00795.
    • See wwa.00025.
  • Cite this page: Whitman, Walt. "America needs her own poems." The Walt Whitman Archive. Gen. ed. Matt Cohen, Ed Folsom, & Kenneth M. Price. Accessed 16 April 2024. <http://www.whitmanarchive.org>.
  • Source File: duk.00131.xml (TEI)

Key

Textual Feature Appearance
Overwritten brown with strikethrough
Added inline purple with double underline
Uncertain gray with wavy underline
Supplied from another source turquoise with brackets
Metamark green with triple underline
Long deletion gray background with top and bottom border
  [begin leaf 1 recto]

America needs her own poems, in her own spirit body and spirit, different from all the rest hitherto—freer,, more muscular, than the any hitherto ^comprehending more, and unspeakably grander.—Not the importations, or any thing in the spirit of the importations aloof and in These States exiles;—not the superb, chronicles, faultless, and rich, perennial ^ as they are and deserve to be in their native lands from ^of the past events and characters of Europe—nothing f not the current products of imaginative persons, with tropes, likenesses, piano music, and smooth rhymes—nor of

  [begin leaf 1 verso]
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