His manuscript was like Joseph’s coat, of many colors. Sometimes he used half a dozen kinds of paper on which to complete one poem—a verse or two each, and then he would pin them together. His poems he worked over and over again. He would roll a completed poem, or a book, or an article, up, wrap it about with a piece of twine and throw it in the corner of his room . . . . He used the crook of his cane to hook out what he wanted from the pile on the floor.

-Tom Donaldson

 

          Thomas Donaldson, Walt Whitman the Man (New York: Frances P. Harper, 1896), pp. 73-74.