I Hear America Singing, illustrated pop-up book by Robert Sabuda
Walt Whitman, influenced by Emerson and by his experience of frontier life—and his occupations as a laborer in many fields—wrote “I Hear America Singing,” later included in his Leaves of Grass, in the mid-nineteenth century. The poem celebrates the singing of “varied carols” by mechanics, masons, shoe-makers, and woodcutters at work, finally adding “the delicious singing of the mother, of the young wife at work, or of the girl sewing or washing”—a reminder of where we were, as woman, at that time.
Fired from his government job after the publication, apparently because he openly and joyfully celebrated the body and its varied sexual expressions, Whitman never received during his lifetime the praise he deserved. He also experimented with new poetic forms. And, as a laborer, a member of the working class, he was not considered to have the credentials expected of poets trained in academia and, usually at that time, members of the white upper class. Yet the powerful voice of his poetry endures.
I was rereading some of Whitman’s work a few minutes ago in a big worn volume of American poetry I picked up some years ago for a song in a long vanished coffee shop. It had belonged to a student and her penciled reactions flowered in Whitman’s verses, with “WOW!” written over and over in the margins, following lines like
“All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses,
And to die is different from what anyone supposes, and luckier.”
Now at this darkest time of the year, I want to thank all of my loyal and persistent readers. You are working members of my life and of my work, all of you, even the many I don’t know and may never meet. As you head into holiday celebrations, help yourselves to liberal portions of Whitman and Emily Dickinson, put on your favorite music and howl or croak as you sing—but sing, and go on singing, as the light slowly grows.
I Hear America Singing
By Walt Whitman
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.
To say a word about “I Hear America Singing”. When I consider this poem I factor into my comprehension of things that my paternal grandfather was born in 1855 while the poem was published in 1860.