Composition

To analyze the poem “I Hear America Singing” by Walt Whitman, it is necessary to focus on its outer and inner composition.

Outer composition

When it comes to “I Hear America Singing”, the first thing that strikes the reader is the unusual form of the poem. Whitman wrote the poem in the form of a list of people whom he admired: carpenters, boatmen, wood-cutters, etc. In total, the poem is comprised of eleven lines, but your textbook presents the poem as being comprised of sixteen lines. Another unusual element of the poem is that it is written in free-verse, which means that the lines do not rhyme with each other. However, there is a certain pattern at the beginning of some lines which indicates that Whitman intended for the poem to have a stru...