"I Hear America Singing" is basically a joyful list of people working away. The speaker of the poem announces that he hears "America singing," and then describes the people who make up America—the mechanics, the carpenters, the shoemakers, the mothers, and the seamstresses. He declares that each worker sings "what belongs to him or her," and that they all sing loud and strong as they work. And as the poem ends, we learn that they like to sing at their parties, too. America: full of American Idol wannabes.