On May 9, 1880, Whitman wrote his friend John Burroughs, mentioning his new poem: "I suppose you saw my Riddle Song in the first number of Sunnyside Pressif not, I can send you the Progress with it in it." Founded in 1880, the Sunnyside Press was a weekly newspaper, published in Tarrytown, New York until 1883 when it merged with the Record of the Times to form the Tarrytown Press-Record. Little is known about the circumstances of the publication of "A Riddle Song" or Whitmans connection with the newspaper. The first issues of the Tarrytown Sunnyside Press are extremely rare, and the Walt Whitman Archive currently has no transcription or page images for the poem that appeared in this periodical.
Myerson, Joel. Walt Whitman: A Descriptive Bibliography. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1993.
Whitman, Walt. The Correspondence. Edited by Edwin Haviland Miller. New York: New York University Press, 1961.
Whitman, Walt. Leaves of Grass: Comprehensive Reader's Edition. Edited by Harold W. Blodgett and Sculley Bradley. New York: New York University Press, 1965.
"A Riddle Song." Tarrytown Sunnyside Press, 3 April 1880