Walt Whitman (1819-1892) genuinely believed that poetry could heal the divisions he saw in nineteenth-century America. “The United States themselves,” he wrote, “are essentially the greatest poem.”1 And like a poem, opposing ideas could coexist.
For Whitman, fragmentation was a lived reality in the United States as he experienced it. After all, he witnessed the Civil War first hand. Throughout his work, Whitman returns to the idea of joining pieces together to make a unified whole—from the atoms making up matter to the blades of grass in a field, to the pages bound together in a book. In “Song of Myself” he wrote,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.2
This vision of parts coming together to form a whole was, of course, a metaphor for the states striving to become united. In a notebook, he wrote:
These heated, torn, distracted ages are to be compacted and made whole3
Just as we find this metaphor of parts coming together to form a unity throughout Whitman’s work, his note-taking and writing process depended upon fragmentation as he gathered scraps of paper and joined them together to create unified texts. Let’s take a closer look at Whitman’s many fragments.
Whitman’s Scraps
Walt Whitman was a poet of fragments. And, his writing process was incredibly splintered as he gathered scraps of paper with his scribbles. These might include bits of verse or potential titles for works. For example, he played with lots of titles for the poem that would become Leaves of Grass. At one point he considered, “Sands and Drifts” as a title for a section of the poem. It appears prominently in one of the following scraps:
One of my favorite scraps shows Whitman directing himself to just write:
Make the Works—
Do not go into criticisms or arguments at all
Make full=blooded, rich, flush, naturals works—
Insert natural things, indestructibles, idioms, characteristics,
rivers, states, persons, […]
Be full of strong sensual germs
Whitman would sew some of these scraps together into little handmade notebooks like this:
But, for the most part, Whitman left his scraps completely disorganized and in disarray. He wrote on scraps of paper—mostly unbound—surrounding himself (quite literally) in a flurry of paper. In a photograph from later in his life, we find Whitman surrounded by notes.
Whitman’s Cultural Geography Scrapbook
If Whitman’s process was fragmented, it was also a continual attempt at unifying those fragments. Just as the United States began to fracture in 1856, Whitman began collecting scraps in a massive scrapbook that scholars refer to as the “Cultural Geography Scrapbook.” It would grow to include more than a thousand pieces of paper.
The editors of The Walt Whitman archive suggest that, whether consciously or not, Whitman was attempting to create order and cohesion as his country crumbled around him. Within a few years, the Civil War would break out.
Whitman filled the scrapbook with interesting historical and geographical anecdotes. He pastes in large maps of the world, lectures on the earth’s “physiology,” and articles on astronomy. Throughout it all, the United States was never far from his mind as we see in these doodles:
Whitman’s Dictionary Scrapbook
At the same time, Whitman assembled notes he could use for a potential dictionary of American words. While he admired Webster’s dictionary, he felt that it did not go far enough in recognizing the people’s idioms.4
Whitman imagined a new dictionary filled with “strong coarse talk.” He went to the Bowery to listen for unique words and argued that this dictionary should also include the language of the enslaved.5
Of course, he stuffed this notebook to the brim with more of his scraps: Here he includes newspaper cuttings and handwritten notes on words like
Canaille—(“doggery”)
Gobe mouches- the catcher idler—trifler of no opinion…
Chamade-the beat of the drum, as a signal for parly or surrender
He also records historical information including the indigenous name for Manhattan (Manhatta):
Manhatta— A peninsula island enclosed by active,
andchanging, or playful waters.—
If all of America’s many dialects could live together in a scrapbook, couldn’t the people who spoke them live peacefully together too?
Whitman’s Hospital and Civil War Notes
Whitman saw the fissures in America firsthand, serving as a nurse (the term he used was “wound-dresser”) during the Civil War, he carried slips of paper and notebooks in his pocket and recorded the carnage wrought by civil strife.
Whitman kept many notebooks during the war. Later, he would refer to them as “lurid and blood-smutch’d note-books,” because they were, indeed, splattered with soldiers’ blood.
As a nurse, Whitman wrote letters on behalf of wounded soldiers. Here is one of his loose scraps of paper, reminding himself to send a letter on behalf of Milford Clark:
Ward B Bed 25
Milford Clark
Co C 125 NY
Wounded in head
Write for above to Henry Prince
451 Massachusetts Av
Ask him to come & see Milford…
But Whitman’s greatest attempt at unifying all the discordant parts of America was, of course, Leaves of Grass. He revised it throughout his life—adding more and more fragments and scraps as he went. I’ll cover the composition of this monumental work in this week’s postscript.
Notes on Whitman’s Notes
Make a mess: the creative process can be messy. Part of the joy of creating is coloring outside the lines. And so much of the work involved in preparing a piece for publication is in cleaning it up enough to be understandable for an audience—hopefully while maintaining some of that initial spark.
Think metaphorically: the material condition of Whitman’s notes resemble his larger poetic project—of combining disparate pieces into a cohesive unity. For Whitman, fragmentation was a creative process. Ask yourself what you are trying to accomplish with your notes. Do they take a material form that matches your ideas and ambitions?
Collect words: As a writer and self-appointed documenter of common language, Whitman collected words for his dictionary. If you live in a place like New York City, go to a location that gets a lot of foot traffic (like Whitman’s Bowery) and see if you can pick up new words.
Noted is fueled by you. Your ❤️’s and comments inspire me. As always, I would love to know your thoughts.
Yours in note-taking,
P.S.
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Whitman, Walt. Leaves of Grass: The First Edition. Edited by Malcolm Cowley, Penguin Classics, 1976, p. 5.
Whitman, Leaves of Grass: The First Edition, p.25.
Here’s the full, marvelous sentence:
I celebrate myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.
Quoted in Whitman, Walt. Every Hour, Every Atom: A Collection of Walt Whitman’s Early Notebooks and Fragments. Edited by Zachary Turpin and Matt Miller, University Of Iowa Press, 2020, p. 354.
Reynolds, David S. Walt Whitman’s America: A Cultural Biography. Vintage, 2011, p. 502.
Cited in Reynolds, p. 502.
I feel legitimized. Writing is (to me at least) like putting together a puzzle, and I see the same for Whitman as well. ✏️
Fantastic post, Jillian. Whitman sitting composed amid his mess of papers is such an amazing photo!