Revision Confusion

I must admit, that I could not find 'Song of Myself' within the 1860 version for about 30 minutes. I looked up and down everywhere, except for the tag 'Walt Whitman' of course, searching for words within song of myself through the computer. I guess I either looked over 'Walt Whitman' or just assumed it wouldn't be in there. So to turn this confusion into feedback on Whitman's revision... it is interesting that he changed the title from 'Song of Myself' to 'Walt Whitman'. I feel that it takes away from the universality of the poem, combing you and i with everything in existence. It puts a specificity and individuality into it that I don't think Whitman was going for in the original piece. To comment on the actual structural changes, what I noticed most was that he played around with the syntax... of everything, not only 'Song of Myself' but throughout the whole Leaves of Grass. Changing elipses to dashes and using parentheticals when he hadn't before, capitalizing and uncapitalizing things that weren't so before. I believe this could have something to do with the idea that Ed Folsom and Kent Price brought to our attention: how 'Song of Myself' maybe wasn't such an audio/speech based narrative, but an experiment with print. Elipses look almost unprofessional... sort of mash everything together into one idea or statement, where as dashes and parentheticals are very precise, they get the point across very easily. While Walt's content surrounds ideas of oneness and concepts mashed together, maybe he wanted his message to come across more clear. For example, in 'Song of Myself,' he capitalizes the word Soul in the 1860's version, where it was never capitalized before. Maybe Whitman really wanted to drive the idea of one's Soul into the reader in a way that he felt wasn't showing importance in the 1855 one.

Now to comment on the revisions from 1860-1867, the most penciled in revisions on the 1860 edition had to do with the structure of the lists and recognitions he makes to people of certain professions etc. as well as the dedications he makes the poem is for. Again, I think it has something to do with being more straight-forward in that he wants to cram as much as he can in one small area while making it legible or understandable for the reader. He's playing with the structure really more than the actual content.