Title: My Canary Bird
Creator: Walt Whitman
Date: March 2, 1888
Whitman Archive ID: per.00117
Source: New York Herald 2 March 1888: 6. Our transcription is based on a digital image of a microfilm copy of the original For a description of the editorial rationale behind our treatment of the periodical poems, see our statement of editorial policy.
Contributors to digital file: Elizabeth Lorang, April Lambert, and Susan Belasco
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TO THE EDITOR OF THE HERALD:
1. Reprinted in the "Sands at Seventy" annex to Leaves of Grass (1888). [back]
2. This poem is likely the one Whitman mentions in a letter to Richard Maurice Bucke on February 16, 1888: "it is chilly here as I finish this—my little bird sits hunch'd up in a lump, & sings not—but spring weather is coming & early summer & I will write a little poem ab't it to warm me up." For the full letter, see Edwin Haviland Miller, ed., The Correspondence (New York: New York University Press, 1969), 4: 151. [back]