{
 "id": "walt-whitman/when-i-read-the-book",
 "title": "When I Read the Book",
 "ordinal": null,
 "subtitle": null,
 "poet": "Walt Whitman",
 "poet_slug": "walt-whitman",
 "language": "en",
 "book": "Leaves of Grass",
 "book_slug": "leaves-of-grass",
 "book_kind": "volume",
 "sequence": 9,
 "container": "Inscriptions",
 "epigraph": null,
 "first_published": {
  "year": 1867,
  "venue": "Leaves of Grass (New York, 1867)",
  "note": "Located in this edition by matching this text's lines against the Whitman Archive transcription of the 1867 Chapin edition (ppp.00473). The corpus text follows the 1891–92 arrangement, by which the poem had been revised. First located printing is this volume; an earlier periodical printing has not been established.",
  "uncertain": false,
  "sources": [
   "https://whitmanarchive.org/item/ppp.00473"
  ]
 },
 "source": {
  "kind": "standard-ebooks",
  "repo": "standardebooks/walt-whitman_leaves-of-grass",
  "file": "inscriptions.xhtml",
  "upstream": [
   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1322",
   "https://archive.org/details/leavesgrass03whitgoog"
  ],
  "rights": "public domain (SE dedication; underlying text pre-1931)"
 },
 "verification": {
  "level": "structural-only",
  "last_checked": "2026-08-12"
 },
 "stats": {
  "n_lines": 7,
  "n_stanzas": 1,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 71,
  "max_indent": 0
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "When I read the book, the biography famous,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And is this then (said I) what the author calls a man’s life?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And so will some one when I am dead and gone write my life?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "(As if any man really knew aught of my life,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Why even I myself I often think know little or nothing of my real life,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Only a few hints, a few diffused faint clues and indirections",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I seek for my own use to trace out here.)",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}