Interlude I · I Hear America Singing — The Talking Hands Series

☞ This is a rest stop, not a quiz. Nothing here is scored. It belongs to Topics 53 and 54 on your map — reading poems whole, and poems that make an argument. Interludes arrive every six quizzes or so.

The poet, briefly

Walt Whitman was born on Long Island in 1819 and worked most of the jobs a working city offered: printer's apprentice, schoolteacher, carpenter, newspaperman in Brooklyn. In 1855 he printed his own book of poems, Leaves of Grass, setting some of the type himself, and kept enlarging it for the rest of his life. This poem joined the book in 1860. Its idea is simple and, in 1860, bold: if you want to hear America's voice, don't listen to its politicians or its pulpits. Listen to its workers, at work.

I Hear America Singing

Walt Whitman, from Leaves of Grass (1860)

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 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 him or 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.

How to read it

Read it aloud once — poems are written for the voice, and this one especially: it's a poem about singing, built out of long breaths. Then look at its shape. It's one sentence, and it's a list: line after line, one worker, one song. The list is the argument. Whitman doesn't say "workers matter" — he seats them, one by one, in a poem, which in 1860 was a place workers were rarely seated. And notice the line the whole poem turns on: each singing what belongs to him or her and to none else. Every worker owns a song no one else can sing. That's a claim about dignity, made without the word.

Now notice who's in the list — the trades of 1860 — and who isn't. Every list has edges, Whitman's included. He left the poem open at the end for a reason: a catalog like this invites more lines.

Add your line

Write one line in Whitman's shape for a worker he didn't list — someone you know, or yourself. Name the work, and let the line show the song. One from this classroom's world, to show the shape:

The home health aide singing on the first bus of the morning, her transfer folded in her glove.

Now yours: