Witty Whitman

One of the first things that I noticed in the pages was a stamp, and at first I didn't understand what it could have been but then I realized that it was just classification of the book for record. On page 3, the first word that I could make out was "Brochure" at the top. He stated this as if to start his dialogue between him and Abraham Lincoln. Later on that page I picked out "Lessons for a president elect", this might be significant because it shows that he feels he has value to give to arguably the most important man in America at the time. Furthermore, Whitman never actually had dialogue with Lincoln in real life so this might show his respect and how he values the president elect. On the following page I see that he talks about multiple platforms with multiple religions. This reminds me of how he based Leaves of Grass partly on the bible (Book of James?), but in this page he also talks about Greek, Jews, and Christians. Although he states that he is presenting a new form that includes the previously mentioned. This is significant because it allows us to realize why Whitman talks the way he does in his poems, because he believes in a faith that we do not understand. The lower pages have drawings on them, this could be significant to show how detail oriented he is, because I can even see the resemblance between him drawing himself and his image on my book cover.

On page three, he was apparently trying out a new group of poems that he would never end up publishing. This brings the thought how many of his works did he not publish but might have finished and did he ever write things that opposed his views to get new perspectives for other poems? I find it very interesting on page 4 that his third religion was really a way to keep his ideals but still try and save the Union. This is significant because I feel this is very selfish of Whitman and seems to be more of a campaign for his own beliefs than him helping others. This also is shows why Whitman was such a strong supporter of Lincoln during his presidency.  Also, the images show that maybe not all of the things in his journal were his. The brown nose on page 12 suggests that other things were passed around and that is why the image contains a brown nose. The random images of people and images could also show a connection to Leaves of Grass showing that people may have different things on the outside but we are all the same on the inside.