Walt Whitman's I Hear America Singing

Of all the poems that Walt Whitman wrote, the poem, “I Hear America Singing” has the strongest emotional appeal. This poem can be analyzed by its line length, repetitive technique, and thematic contents.
Whitman uses free verse, a literary device, in this poem. It could be seen from the poem that it does not have regular patterns or arrangements of rhyme and meter. His line length varies each time. In addition, he does not use numerous stanzas in this poem. In fact, this poem has only one stanza. I believe that Whitman intentionally used varying line lengths in this poem to underscore the theme of his poem that different individuals can unite together to produce a single expression.
The repetitive technique employed by Whitman in his poem is anaphora. This technique can be observed in the poem, “I Hear America Singing.” There is a repetition of phrases at the beginning lines of the poem, “The carpenter singing… The mason singing… The boatman singing… the deckhand singing… The shoemaker singing… the hatter singing…” (Whitman). This deliberate repetition creates an artistic effect that

The fact that there was no specific song mentioned suggests that the importance is in the singing and not the song. Like weaving a tapestry, Whitman strings together the word singing throughout his entire poem, creating a rhythm in the poem. This tapestry of individuals is as a varied as a carpenter to a boatman and as diverse as mother to a girl. In the opening line, he personifies America as an individual with the phrase, “I hear America singing” to create the imagery of a single individual and that the all the different voices are part of the that single America’s voice rather than a collection of individuals. It projects an image of a melting pot rather than a salad