By this time, Jimmy was moving slowly toward a manic period. Although he was still in “denial” about the Porters having asked him to leave, and there was no open reference to it in his letters or poems, his anxiety found outlet in increased activity. For the time being this energy was channeled constructively into poetry. Unable to sleep one winter night in Southampton, he picked up a facsimile edition of Whitman’s original Leaves of Grass. He started reading the poem, hoping it would help put him to sleep, but “of course it was the wrong hour to do it because it is an incredibly stimulating work,” he recalled. Obviously, he had read Whitman before this, but confronted anew with “Song of Myself,” it came as a fresh revelation. Within a few days he was inspired to try to write something “like it,” and he began “The Crystal Lithium.”
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