About this Item

Title: Bloom

Creator: Walt Whitman

Date: 1856 or earlier

Whitman Archive ID: duk.00294

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 manuscripts, see our statement of editorial policy.

Editorial note: This leaf consists of two manuscript scraps glued together. The bottom scrap includes notes toward "Song of the Broad-Axe," which was first published in the 1856 edition of Leaves of Grass as "Broad-Axe Poem." This suggests a date before 1856. The writing on the top scrap, which describes one of Whitman's acquaintances, might have informed the description of the masculine "saunterer of woods" in that poem. Edward Grier writes of "Bloom" that "It has been suggested that this is Nathaniel Bloom, a member of [Whitman]'s circle of friends in the early 1860s...but it seems more likely that the name refers to either 'Gilbert Bloom, carman,' or 'Gilbert J. Bloom, carman,' as listed in the [New York City] directories for 1854–1855" (Notebooks and Unpublished Prose Manuscripts [New York: New York University Press, 1984], 1:201).