W.W. (Walter White)

At first glance I notice how worn out Whitman's notebook is.  I can only imagine that he used it quite often and had it with him at all times.  Based on the scribbles, random phrases and sentences I feel like this was something that Whitman used to keep his ideas in. Something that I noticed on many pages of this book was a red circular stamp, so I googled "walt whitman stamp on journal" and found an annotated version of his notebook.  It turns out the stamp is just a Library of Congress collection mark.  After scrolling through the notebook more, it is reinforced to me that this was an idea book.  Although I can't really make out anything Whitman has written, I came to this conclusion based on his formatting, use of question marks, and crossing out sentences.  I doubt that Whitman actually spend significant amounts of time at once in this notebook because of the quality of his drawings.  They are quick sketches that seem to represent ideas, not necessarily be perfect pieces of art.  Based on what I can make out, I think that these idea's were for future or current poems because of the way they were worded.

So when I clicked on the second link it brought me to the annotated version of Whitman's notebook that I had previously used.  At first I thought I had accidentally reloaded the page I was previously using, but after a second I realized that I accidentally looked at the link I wasn't supposed to until the end.  Oops :).  Anyways, one thing I learned from the annotations is that Whitman was trying to come up with an idea for a title of a book that he never ended up publishing.  I was right about the notebook being a place for ideas and quick notes.  Something that I didn't pick up on was Whitman's writings about religion, probably because I couldn't read most of what he wrote.  Another thing that Whitman did was write poetry that was related to current events of his time.  "Libertad" is a poem from the 1860s about the problems that the Union was facing.  Something that this notebook reveals about Whitman himself is his immediate reaction to things.  It seems that most of what he wrote was about events that had just happened, like with the problems going on in the nation or just with day to day life.  Something that surprised me was the fact that Whitman shared this notebook with others.  The annotated sketches in the back of the book reveal that the pictures were likely drawn by one of Whtiman's drinking buddies.  If Whitman gave this notebook to someone else, he either trusted them very well or was intoxicated.  Overall, this notebook reveals that Whitman liked to keep his ideas organized in one place and was always scribbling his things down so he wouldn't forget them.