For example, Bowers "facing page" structure provides a descriptive bibliography and transcription to Calamus 41 that captures the stages of revision, but often sacrifices in its representation of the productive process a logical parallel to the process in favor of narrative presentation and smooth syntax.
[Folder 38. One leaf of pink paper, a few pinholes in the center. Written in black ink. The original poem number 101 was crossed out, but before the deletion the final digit had been altered to a zero and then back to '1.' Later, to the right and with a different pen, was written '?100'. In the title the word "One", traced first in pencil and then in black ink, is interlined above 'Those" deleted first in pencil and then in ink. 1860, p 376; Camden I, 161.]Bowers' study has come to be known as "definitive." But his description seems to impose linguistic, syntactical structures of prose writing upon a description of a writing process which follows a different logical sequence. His work is similar to a translation, a process in which meaning is necessarily transformed in transferring meaning from one medium to another. The line: "The original poem number 101 was crossed out, but before the deletion the final digit had been altered to a zero and then back to '1'. Later, to the right and with a different pen, was written '?100'" inserts the phrase "but before" to disrupt the logical description of a chronological sequence of writing, and assumes that "?100" was indeed "added" later. Why is it important for this editor to use language to represent the chronology of the "later" addition of "?100" but to neglect, through his use of syntax, the chronology of productive events which happened "before the deletion?" Furthermore, since Bowers' description only addresses the inked registration of what is on the manuscript page, and not necessarily the physical processes which brought them about, his description is reductive of the writing process.
Bowers sets up two distinctive geographies of representation: a created space of the transcription and a created space of his productive description. These spaces are simultaneously presented, a structure that partially solves the problems of Whitman documents in which one aspect of the document is simultaneously more than one entity. For example, in many of the Barrett manuscripts, an addition is at the same time a deletion. Indeed Bowers' structure can solve problems of representing this structure. But in some documents this problem is even more complex, with some additions deleted and then re-added. In other documents, such as manuscripts of the original "Calamus" Live Oak With Moss notebook, a manuscript of one poem is pasted to the top of a manuscript of another poem; there are two poems in one document. By illustrating Bowers' description of the productive process, we can reinforce his argument for each step of production. For example:
[Folder 38. One leaf of pink paper, a few pinholes in the center. Written in black ink. The original poem number 101 was crossed out, but before the deletion the final digit had been altered to a zero and then back to '1.' Later, to the right and with a different pen, was written '?100'. In the title the word "One", traced first in pencil and then in black ink, is interlined above 'Those' deleted first in pencil and then in ink. 1860, p 376; Camden I, 161.]These images selected from the manuscript act as partial facsimiles which convey the productive process. In the case of the Live Oak With Moss manuscript, which simultaneously represents two poems, the linking of both poem transcriptions to images of the manuscript sections would contextualize the description as a simultaneous representation. Such an approach, however, would by necessity be delivered in a hypertext document which, while perhaps clarifying the productive process on the one hand, would constitute a departure from the book as we know it and raise new problems of comprehension for the reader.
