Analysis Of The Poem Those Winter Sundays By Robert Hayden

As we get older we tend to reflect more on our life and get our priorities together. We tend to realize who and what is important, the people who mean the most to us and the ones we can’t live without. Who would those significant individuals be for us? For most people it would be their parents. In the poems “My Father’s Song” by Simon J. Ortiz, and “My Mother” by Ellen Bryant Voigt, both writers express their emotion towards a parent. The poems are similar in many ways simply because they share a parent child relationship, they are also vastly different. “My Fathers Song” is a poem about a son who lost his father and is grieving and referring back to old memories, reflecting on their past and the wonderful time he had with his father. “My Mother” on the other hand is a poem about a daughter who lost her mother and is having a difficult time coping as she reflects on the decisions she made as a child and how that affected her relationship with her mother. Despite their differences, the two poems share a true connection of love towards their parent. Most notably “My Fathers Song” and “My Mother” differ in the relationship with their parent, the settings in which the memories they hold of their parents take place, and who they are mourning over, yet the two have a strong emphasis on love.

Everyone has a father. No matter if the father is present in a child’s life or not, he still exists and takes that role. A father has a major impact on his child whether he knows it or not, and that impact and example shapes the child’s perspective on life, and on love. The authors, Robert Hayden and Lucille Clifton, share the impact of their fathers through poetry, each with their own take on how their fathers treated them. The poems “Forgiving My Father” and “Those Winter Sundays” have significant differences in the speaker’s childhood experiences, the tone of the works, and the imagery presented, which all relate to the different themes of each poem.

How not having a father figure affected their emotional and phycological well-being. Also, it taught the readers that sometimes having a father does not necessarily, mean they are a father figure, for example Mr. Clutter, he was there for his family and children, but he chose other things to be proud of instead of his children, he felt that his achievements were more important than his children’s

Hayden’s father worked very hard, “with cracked hands that ached” (4). Because hands are very durable, it takes a lot of constant force tearing away at them for them to crack (so the father’s work is indeed very hard). The father works hard because Hayden wants his readers to consider that he is practically slaving over getting his job done. The father could even be said to display a slight obsession over being able to complete this simple task on a consistent basis for his family. The visual imagery also becomes warmer as the poem continues. The father’s “cracked hands that ached” (4) did not only hard work, but “polished my good shoes as well” (12), which demonstrates a huge shift in Hayden’s chosen imagery. Near the end, the imagery “warms up” again as Hayden begins to understand the actions of his father, who helped so much to take care of him. As a young boy, he could not understand how his father could claim to love him, but “with age comes wisdom.” As Hayden grew older and wiser, he was able to visualize the ways his father, in his own unique way, showed love. However, even from all of this, to rely on sight alone is not to fully understand the meaning behind this

Summer by Josiah Conder , is describe as an a completely opposite Summer than the one everyone is familiar with. When thinking of the summer, thoughts of heat, vacation, and fun are usually associated with it. Conder describes the Summer as being a miserable time, where the skies are gray and gloomy. The sonnet itself is English/Shakespearean model which makes it easier for Conder to express different ideas in each quatrain but still relate them. Also Conder was a poet during the Romantic era where any feeling could be expressed towards anything. And that is what Conder does when describing the Summer. In the poem the speaker is having a conversation with no one , while they describe the Summer. Conder uses diction, imagery, alliteration and metaphor to help convey the idea that the Summer is not as fun and appealing.

An ideal father should be someone who nurtures and lovingly cares for his offspring, and some kids are blessed by this opportunity growing up to spend time with their father, even if their parents are divorced. As the years go by our fathers grow older and we too grow old. We start to reminisce about the nostalgic times we had when we were young. In the poems “My Papa’s Waltz” by Theodore Roethke, and “Tips From My Father” by Carol Ann Davis; the authors draw from different life events, in which each communicate a happy memory with their fathers to the audience, and conclude a common theme surrounding a bond with their fathers, which can be inferred through how the parents care about their kids and show affection to them by giving their

In” Winter Saturday” by Earle Birney, the poet develops the comparison between the farmers and caterpillars by visual and kinesthetic imagery. The harsh weather echoes the farmers’ empty feeling. A storm hit the town and the wind and the snow start while the farmers “find in the Ford their cocoon” (4), implying that they are alone facing the cold weather similar to caterpillars struggling to survive in the cruel nature. Their feeling of void is amplified by the chilling environment which induces their “dreams of light and sound” (7) which matches moths’ behaviour to approach light. When they arrive in the city centre where the lights are concentrated, their movement is compared to the moths beating wings as they “flutter to movie / [and] throb

Authors tend to write on subjects that they know the most about, or subjects that affect them on a personal level. Authors and poets use various aspects of life for the basis of their works, such as life experiences, romances, and family roles. Poems like “Those Winter Sundays” by Robert Hayden and “Forgiving My Father” by Lucille Clifton feature one of the most important roles in a family: a father. The two poems differ vastly in many regards, but many similarities surface among them and a common theme resides between them. Through the similarities they hold, the poems represent a common theme of regret for one’s lack of action.

In Song of Solomon, the father provokes fear in his children. Oddly, Milkman's sisters seem to look forward to the anger and tension of their father. Morrison writes, "The way he mangled their grace, wit, and self-esteem was the single excitement of their days...Without the tension and drama he(the father) ignited, they might not have known what to do with themselves" ,and the sisters "waited eagerly for any hint of him.(11)" Rather than expressing love for their children verbally, the father figures often show their love through actions and through providing for the children. We see an example of this in the poem "Those Winter Sundays" by Robert Hayden. The father in this poem wakes especially early in the morning to chop wood, start a fire, and make the house warm for his son. Despite the father's loving actions, the son speaks indifferently to him and never thanks him.

Similarly, Hayden’s Those Winter Sundays starts with a young adult reflecting back on his childhood and remembering how hard his father worked. He thinks back and his tone is of admiration and respect. This is apparent when the young man reflects, “Sundays too my father got up early…No one ever thanked him.” (Hayden, 1-5) The young man is realizing how hard his father worked and how little recognition he got. This makes a certain degree of guilt come over the young man. He remembers “fearing the chronic angers of that house” (Hayden, 9) and dislikes his father because of it by “speaking indifferently to him” (Hayden, 10). Then the

T.S Eliot’s poem, “The winter evening settles down” is a short, simple to read poem with several different examples of imagery. Eliot uses descriptive words, for instance, “withered leaves”, “broken blinds”, and “lonely cab-horse” (lines 7-10). He paints an extremely bleak image of a town that seems to be deserted of people. The tone of the poem plays hand-in-hand with the imagery used. This town is an unpleasant place where it has seemed to be neglected for some years now. Eliot’s use of imagery takes the reader to this deserted, torpid place; however, at the same time, his goal is to bring the life back into this grim town.

Being a child is one of the hardest stages in a person’s life. They go through doing all the wrong things in order to learn how to do the right things, and then they socially develop into a sensible mature adult. During this stage of a young child's life, the roles of parenting are absolutely crucial and determine a child’s role that he/she is going to play in society in the future. This is a crucial part of everyone’s life, they need to learn what they are good at and what they are not good at. In the poem "Those Winter Sundays" by Robert Hayden, there is a sense that the narrator does not have a special bond with his father when he was a young boy, and that there is a sense of fear toward his father. I

If you had the opportunity of going back in time would you? Back to your childhood where life was so much easier? It helps you become the person you are today by learning on what those who loved you did. In the poem “Those Winter Sundays” and the short story “Mothers”, both narrators show that reminiscing about their loved ones can be emotional. People should hold on to memories, it can be the only thing they truly have from the past.

Something so simple as thanking someone for holding the door open or smiling at passerby’s can make a big difference in someone’s day. So, it is even more important to treat loved ones with respect and to show them appreciation, as it means much more than a simple smile from a stranger. Guilt is a very difficult thing to live with. It is better to be courteous of others and thoughtful than to deal with the dreadful guilt. The themes of guilt and appreciation are shown in the poem, “Those Winter Sundays” by Robert Hayden.

This was not a coincidence. The irony utilized by Frost clearly contributes to the overall theme of design governing situations on earth.