About this Item

Title: Breathjuice

Creator: Walt Whitman

Date: Between 1850 and 1856

Whitman Archive ID: med.00728

Source: The transcription presented here is derived from Walt Whitman, Notebooks and Unpublished Prose Manuscripts, ed. Edward F. Grier (New York: New York University Press, 1984), 1:195. Grier based his text on Notes and Fragments, ed. Richard Maurice Bucke (London, Ontario: A. Talbot & Co., printers, 1899), 169. The location of this manuscript is unknown. For a description of the editorial rationale behind our treatment of manuscripts, see our statement of editorial policy.

Editorial note: This list may relate to the following line from the poem published as "Bunch Poem" in the 1856 Leaves of Grass (later titled "Spontaneous Me"): "Love-thoughts, love-juice, love-odor, love-yielding, love-climbers, and the climbing sap" (310). Because the manuscript has not been located it is difficult to speculate on the circumstances or date of its composition, but it seems likely that it was written in the early to mid-1850s.