by Kerry Michael Wood

Created on: July 21, 2008   Last Updated: December 23, 2010

Walt Whitman was a contemporary of Poe, Emerson, Longfellow, and Bryant, but his work is quite different from theirs. A pioneer of free verse and non-esoteric subject matter, he is often spoken of as American's first modern poet. I Hear America Singing is a prime example of his focus on working-class democracy using realistic imagery.

Whereas Emerson and Thoreau were Harvard educated, Longfellow a professor at that university, Bryant a lawyer, and Poe a student of the classics and foreign languages, Whitman's education ended in his early teens. His friends were not Transcendentalists, Puritan ministers, or literati but sailors, farmers and fishermen.

His early poetry was considered crude and gross in its subject matter. He proudly referred to his slangy, unrhymed verses as "barbaric yawp." Whittier reportedly took a quick look at an early edition of Leaves of Grass and threw his copy into the fireplace.

Like Emily Dickinson who published only ten poems during her lifetime, Whitman was virtually unknown until after his death even though his work drew admiring comment from Emerson, Thoreau, and Abraham Lincoln.

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I Hear America Singing

I HEAR America singing, the varied carols I hear;

Those of mechanics, each one singing his as it should be blithe and strong,

The carpenter singing his, as he measures his plank or beam,

The mason singing his as he makes ready for work, or leaves off work.

The boatman singing what belongs to him in his boat, the deckhand singing on the steamboat deck,

The shoemaker singing as he sits on his bench, the hatter singing as he stands,

The wood-cutter's song, the ploughboy's, on his way in the morning, or at the noon intermission, or at sundown,

The delicious singing of the mother, or of the young wife at work, or of the girl sewing or washing,

Each singing what belongs to her, and to none else,

The day what belongs to the day at night, the party of young fellows, robust, friendly,

Singing, with open mouths, their strong melodious songs.

This poem demonstrates typical Whitman techniques. Although there is no end rhyme, we hear a sense of melody in his chiming repetitions and a rhythm in the length of his lines that substitutes for the metrical pattern we expect in conventional poetry. Line one announces the main metaphor. Individual Americans doing their various jobs are a harmonious chorus of happy, proud, creative workers.

The speaker

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