Untitled - The Walt Whitman Archive

318 Pages·2011·1.64 MB·English

collage of myself

Walt Whitman and the
Making of Leaves of Grass
matt miller
University of Nebraska Press
Lincoln and London
© 2010 by the Board of Regents of the
University of Nebraska. All rights reserved.
Manufactured in the United States of America
An abbreviated version of chapter 1, “How
Whitman Used His Early Notebooks,” appeared as
“Composing the First Leaves of Grass: How Whitman
Used His Early Notebooks” in Book History 11
(2007). Brief excerpts from chapter 2, “Packing
and Unpacking the First Leaves of Grass,” and
from chapter 3, “Kosmos Poets and Spinal Ideas,”
appeared in Walt Whitman Quarterly Review 24 (Fall
2006–Winter 2007): 85–97. Various typographic
transcriptions herein originally appeared in
“Selections from the Talbot Wilson Notebook of
Walt Whitman,” Double Room 3 (Fall–Winter 2003).
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Miller, Matt (Matthew Ward)
Collage of myself: Walt Whitman and the
making of Leaves of grass / Matt Miller.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
isbn 978-0-8032-2534-3 (cloth: alk. paper)
1. Whitman, Walt, 1819–1892 — Technique.
2. Whitman, Walt, 1819–1892. Leaves of grass.
3. Whitman, Walt, 1819–1892 — Notebooks, sketchbooks, etc.
4. Whitman, Walt, 1819–1892 — Manuscripts. 5. Collage. I. Title.
ps3241.m55 2010
811'.3 — dc22 2010020826
Set in Minion by Bob Reitz.
Designed by Nathan Putens.
For Mona Jorgensen
and Lana Miller

Contents
List of Illustrations ix
Acknowledgments xi
Introduction xiii
List of Abbreviations xix
1 How Whitman Used His 1
Early Notebooks
2 Packing and Unpacking the 48
First Leaves of Grass
3 Kosmos Poets and Spinal Ideas 104
4 Poems of Materials 161
5 Whitman aft er Collage / 215
Collage aft er Whitman
Notes 251
Bibliography 275
Index 283

Illustrations
1 A cut-away leaf showing 4
Whitman’s fi scal ledgers
2 Left over material from 1847 5
3 Whitman contemplates genres 15
for a major early work
4 Probable source manuscript for 16
title phrase “leaf of grass”
5 Whitman revises from third- to 21
fi rst-person address
6 Whitman revises from third- to 23
fi rst-person address
7 Prose notations in verse-like form 27
8 Comparison of “Med Copho΅sis” 30–31
leaf with “wood drake” leaf
9 Emphatic comments on 44
Whitman’s aesthetic theory
10 Whitman among his manuscripts 50
11 “Light and Air!” manuscript 60