Sharron Olds

The narrator of, “Those Winter Sundays” by Robert Hayden, had a complicated relationship, containing silent sacrifices and silent appreciation. First, their complicated relationship is seen by the father’s silent sacrifices he makes for his son. One sacrifice is seen when the father wakes up early on the weekend to ensure the house is warm when his son rises to dress. The sensory imagery included in this poem makes the fathers sacrifice dire, as the outdoors are described as “blueback cold” (Hayden 2). The father makes a silent sacrifice for his son.

In “First Snow”, Mary Oliver uses the persona of snow to project the beauty found in nature. The poem discusses how snow

Robert Frost, author of “Nothing Gold Can Stay”, and Mark Twain, author of Two Ways of Seeing A River, explore the idea of beauty by putting their personal feelings into what they see. Both of these American authors use nature to interpret the ways of beauty into words. Frost and Twain go hand in hand with each other in the aspect of their diction. While Frost and Twain both use imagery to demonstrate fleeting beauty, frost includes time indicators, while Twain uses rhetorical questions.

In Robert Hayden’s poem “Those Winter Sundays” a relationship between the speaker and the speaker’s father is expressed in short but descriptive detail, revealing a kind of love that had gone unnoticed for so long. Throughout the poem, Hayden’s use of connotative diction keeps the poem short and sweet yet packed with significant meaning. The evocative sound patterns play just as great a role setting the harsh and reflective tone of the poem. Together, these devices are used to effectively deliver the poem.

The first poem, “Those Winter Sundays” by Robert Hayden, highlights the relationship between a child and his father through the description of their typical Winter Sunday morning. The first clue to their relationship is the setting of the poem itself: wintertime, which usually indicates an icy or poor relationship. However, this analysis will focus on the strong and descriptive onomatopoeia used to paint the picture of those Sunday mornings for both the father and the child. For example, line 3 describes the dad using his “cracked hands that ached” to warm the family’s house (Hayden 3). The use of the words “cracked” and “ached” elicit specific feelings in the audience in addition to contributing towards the relationship between the father and the child. The use of these two words indicate that the relationship may also be cracked, and the two may be ‘aching’ due to the loss of a wife or mother. A mother or a wife

Poetry, by its very nature, comes from a place within of deep emotion and meaning for the writer. Some poets, such as Sharon Olds, utilize a confessional style that connects their personal experiences to the reader as if confessing their inner thoughts and feelings directly in an almost testimonial fashion. In her poems “After Making Love in Winter” and “Still Life in Landscape,” Sharon Olds utilizes poetic elements of setting and imagery to support a theme to convey her inner self in a way that resonates with readers on a personal level.

One’s appearance is the first thing people judge when they come into contact. Some people immediately wonder about his or her status, weather that person comes from wealth, what their job is, are they married, do they have children, are the not wealthy. In the poem, short story, and drama being analyzed, the appearances of the characters and families are not what one may think. In fact, they are the complete opposite, one may say even deceiving. “Their minds shift and ready, like dunes” (Berger) is an interesting phrase used in Suzanne Berger’s “The Meal” to describe the state of the children. Berger’s “The Meal” along with Alice Walker’s “Everyday Use” and Wendy Wasserstein’s Workout use carefully selected words, tone and imagery to portray a pertinent theme of deception in appearances. Suzanne Berger, Alice Walker, and Wendy Wasserstein all have some sort of family relationship and the woman of the family seems to bear the troubles and struggle. Throughout their literary works these problems help built the story. Alalysis, Oates-Indruchova Libora notes that women in today’s society are not as relevant as their counter parts. They do as much, if not more but do not receive the credit.

Author’s Purpose: In the first poem, the author is attempting to use nature imagery and descriptions of the bitter winter surroundings to describe the melancholy that she feels due to the abandonment of her love. In the second poem, the author continues to use connections with nature and occurrences in the natural world to further convey her feelings. Questions:

Poetry is a timeless form of art, where a function of poetry can be used to share a message, idea, or perspective that was written hundreds of years ago with the world we live in today. In the poems “Sadie and Maud”, “The Buried Life”, and “This Moment”, we witnessed three poems, written in three very different time periods, by very different poets, all portray very similar messages by using the poetic function of inspiration. Inspiration is something that surrounds all of us, and having the ability to find inspiration in timeless pieces of poetry is a tool we all can use, no matter what part of society, culture, or background we come

Although Robert Hayden and Sylvia Plath both use vivid imagery to display their fathers, the way the authors use imagery is different. In Plath’s “Daddy,” she uses imagery to paint a dark picture of a Nazi who holds the title of her father. She uses imagery to compare her father to a black, confining shoe. She compares herself to a foot that has been living in the shoe for thirty years (Plath 290). The shoe metaphor represents her confinement under her father’s rule, but she is finally free. Because freedom from confinement is one of the main themes for “Daddy,” Plath’s use of imagery contributes to the theme of the poem. Conversely, Robert Hayden uses imagery in “Those Winter Sundays” to display his father’s work ethic. He uses works like, “cracked hands,” and “blueblack cold,” to show the conditions that his father went through because of his love for his children (Hayden 288). Hayden’s use of imagery helps to show the theme of “Those Winter Sundays,” regret for being unappreciative of a father’s love, by showing the obstacles that Hayden’s father went through for his son. The authors use of imagery helps display the overall themes of the poems by demonstrating their fathers’ character.

The visual and tactile imagery in Those Winter Sundays shows realization to the narrator to bring a tangible feel to the reader's words. In this poem the father loved in an indifferent way which the narrator later in life understands that his dad did truly love him he just was not greatest at showing his love. From the start, the relationship between the narrator and his father is bad and dark. But throughout the poem the words contrast to a brighter consciousness to his father’s love. With a close examination with visual and tactile imagery Robert Hayden allows the narrator to realize and mature his view of his father’s love as he grows older.

The two poems by Chen Chen, “Popular Street” and “Second Thoughts on a Winter Afternoon,” share a similar concept: the complexity of love between the author and his mother. The poems convey through language the changing the relationship with the mother, as the poet grew up; he lost stability with love from his mother. Both poems contain multiple uses of pronouns “I” and “you” as Chen converses with someone in the poem. The main contrast between these two poems is the tone; the author employs the same themes to convey his conflicted emotional meanings throughout the poem. “Popular Street” uses a playful and humorous voice while “Second Thoughts on a Winter Afternoon” carries a deep sadness through

Wallace Stevens explores the perception of a January winter scene in his poem “The Snow Man.” The poem occurs over the space of five unrhymed stanzas, three lines each, and is contained to a single, deceptively simple sentence. Within this sentence, semicolons split up the viewer’s actions as the speaker expands on the necessities of the scenery. Rather than that which is perceived, it is the act of perception on which the poem focuses, and passive verbs predominantly characterize this central action, imposing conditions on the viewer and the winter scene which is viewed. In this way, the poem is concerned with unification of time and distance, organizing a single instance of perception into multiple actions as the viewer’s mind and body

The poem “I Am Learning to Abandon the World” by Linda Pastan is closely similar in context with Sharon Olds’ “Still Life in Landscape.” Each of the two poems narrates an ordeal with the persona being the writer of the poem. The persona directly speaks to the audience. However, these two works differ in the number of lines, the length and appearance of each line and the entire apparition of the poems. The two authors employ a similar tone as both use a melancholic and reflective tone. The poets present their thoughts in a simple diction and understandable language. It is evident that both authors have an impeccable interest in narrating their story.

Robert Frost said many times throughout his life that all men share a common bond. In his poem “The Tuft of Flowers” he analyzes the potential of such a bond, in first person. Frost turns an everyday common job, into discovering a common bond with another laborer. The author uses a comparison between aloneness with a sense of understanding to demonstrate his theme of unity between two men. In another one of Frost’s poems “Birches” he imagines walking through the woods looking at all the trees, and seeing the top bending towards the ground. When he sees this he imagines they are bending from kids swinging on them, rather then what is really happening to them. It can be analyzed that Frost had a very definitive appreciation for nature, and a very broad imagination.