I Hear America Singing

I HEAR AMERICA SINGING by Walt Whitman “I Hear America Singing” is a poem by the American poet Walt Whitman, first published in the 1860 edition of his book Leaves of Grass. Though the poem was written on the eve of the Civil War, it presents a vision of America as a harmonious Community. Moving from the city to the country, and the land to the sea, the poem envisions America as a place where people do honest, meaningful, and satisfying work - and celebrate that work in song. America emerges from the work of these many and diverse individual people: their separate work comes together to form a coherent whole. In this way, in the poem’s account, America is a nation where individuality and unity are balanced, each producing and reinforcing the other.