Robert Hayden was born on the fourth of August 1913 as Asa Bundy Sheffey. He grew up in a poor Detroit neighborhood called Paradise Valley and was a child of the foster care system; he had an emotionally rocky childhood. As a child Hayden spent most of his time reading due to his poor vision. He later became a domestically and internationally recognized author. “Those Winter Sundays,” first published in 1962, is one of Hayden’s most popular poems. It describes the unspoken love of a father through a distant memory. In this poem, the author excellently illustrates both the simplicities and complexities of parental love, the limited outlook on life and love in childhood due to a lack of knowledge and the author’s underlying emotions about his father and his childhood through the recollection of a simple memory.
In “Those Winter Sundays,” the speaker, is reflecting on a childhood memory. It is of his father waking before the dawn of day to start fires to warm the family dwelling. The speaker looks back in great regret at this memory. The poem is symbolic of the author’s emotional struggles of his childhood. The author successfully portrays a simple event
…show more content…
The father probably gets up early to go to work on the other days of the week. “Blueblack cold,” the speaker uses imagery to allow readers to envision not only the father getting up before the dawn of day, but also to identify the season, which is winter. “Then with cracked hands…banked fires blaze. No one thanked him,” the speaker once again uses imagery to depict the extent of the father’s labor during the week. The father labors all week only to come home, where one expects to rest, to continue to labor for his family that is ungrateful for his deeds. This stanza symbolizes a parent’s selflessness; the speaker’s father goes out of his way to take care of his
In the poem “Tuesday 9:00 AM” Denver Butson writes about how people can not say what is on their mind. He can convey this through the use of figurative language. The figurative language in the poem is used to express the inner conflicts of each character and the addition of details, construct the theme.
In this poem it shows just how hard this life was for little kids “I have a little boy at home, A pretty little son; I think sometimes the world is mine. In him my only one… Before dawn my labor drives me forth. TIS the night when I am free; a stranger am I to my child; and he one to me” (Document 2). This document shows that both she and her son work in the factories. They work so much that they have become strangers because they never see each other.
For different people, comparable situations do not always reproduce the same end results or leave the same impressions. Rather, the resulting conclusion is often highly variable. As is the case of two labors featured in the poems, My Father’s Lunch” and “The life of a Digger”. While Erica Funkhouser’s speaker, Henry, experiences injustice and lack of reward for his hard labor in “The Life of a Digger,” Margarita Engle’s speaker experiences prosperity and remuneration for their father’s hard work in “My Father’s Lunch.” Each author uses the setting of a laboring man’s lunch break to demonstrate the ramifications of a hard day’s work and the rewards or lack thereof for their efforts.
Throughout “My Papa’s Waltz” and “Those Winter Sundays”, the author’s reflect on how their fathers were hard workers, although each memory is emotionally different. In “My Papa’s Waltz”, Roethke remembers his father coming home from work and his hands “Was battered on one knuckle” (Line 10). Even though the father had a long day at work, the boy recounts him coming home and dancing with him. Whereas “Those Winter Sundays”, Hayden recalls his fathers hard work by describing his “Cracked hands that ached/
In the poem “Just as the Calendar Began to Say Summer”, Mary Oliver analogizes two distinct tones. The first tone of voice Oliver uses reflects her negative ideas about the regimented school system. At the beginning of the poem there is a strong sense of what the speaker is going through. Oliver states, “I went out of the school house fast and through the gardens and to the woods,” (ln 1-2).
Sometimes it can be difficult for sons to understand the lessons that fathers teach to them, leading to a disconnect between the two. This is the case for the son and his father in David Bottoms’ “Sign for My Father, Who Stressed the Bunt.” As a child, the speaker lacks appreciation for his father, yet nevertheless they share a common love. As an adult, reminiscing on his baseball experiences with his father, the son through his retrospective point of view now appreciates his father for all his father did. This poem employs diction and varying points of view to emphasize the lack of understanding between the two characters, while symbols and figurative comparisons express their mutual love; this poem analyzes the loving, yet dysfunctional relationship
He could imagine his deception of this town “nestled in a paper landscape,” (Collins 534). This image of the speaker shows the first sign of his delusional ideas of the people in his town. Collins create a connection between the speaker’s teacher teaching life and retired life in lines five and six of the poem. These connections are “ chalk dust flurrying down in winter, nights dark as a blackboard,” which compares images that the readers can picture.
The narrator states that his father woke up and got dressed “in the blueblack cold” in order to go to work where he developed “cracked hands that ached.” Hayden uses the words “cold,” “cracked,” and “ached” to describe the father’s working conditions; the hard Cs in these words make them sound harsh, and therefore imply that the father’s job is difficult. This enhances readers’ impressions that the father continues to work at his challenging and demanding job in order to provide for his family. Both Hayden and Roethke chose to describe the fathers’ hands to represent the children’s living situations. The father in “Those Winter Sundays” had “cracked hands that ached,” while the father in “My Papa’s Waltz” had “battered” hands.
“My Father’s Song” describes the close, tender relationship between a father and his son, while “Those Winter Sundays” depicts a more distant, strained relationship between the father and his family. Ortiz’s lively descriptions of pleasant memories, illustrate how the father’s interactions with his son reveal his love and strengthen their relationship. A darker, emotionless tone fills Hayden’s poem as he emphasizes a father’s austere, yet sacrificial love toward his family. These poems both set different examples of how some families choose live out the bond between one
In the poem “forgiving my father”, Lucille Clifton writes of a young daughter reminiscing about her father’s recent death. The daughter talks about it being Friday, it being payday. She discusses her father and how he owed her and her dead mother money when really they just wanted him to be present. The daughter feels she has had no time with her father and she resents him for it. He was not present in her life and now he has passed away, leaving her with a yearning for something that she will never obtain.
“He tried to kill himself in grade ten when a kid who could still go home to mom and dad had the audacity to tell him; / Get over it.” (lines 54-56) The poet makes it known that the poem is not told in a happy mood nor can it be. The poet also includes different life tragedies and
The Dawn by Garcia Lorca Dawn is poem written by Federico García Lorca. Lorca wrote this poem to his family after he arrived in New York. Lorca writes about his visits in New York and how he felt miserable being there. The Dawn is a poem that talks about an author’s feelings or point of view about the dawn in New York. Garcia Lorca expresses how he felt miserable and empty during dawn in New York because it brought no hope to him.
In the poem “Those Winter Sundays” the poem seems to take place around the year 1943. Judging from the illustration above the poem, it looks like the family is very poor and have very little space. The picture shows that the mother is serving food to the boy and girl, from that point of view it looks like they have to share which shows that they struggle to provide enough food for each individual. As opposed to the poem “Piano” there is no illustration but the speaker does say “hymns in the cozy parlor”. The speaker using the word parlor shows that the family must have lived in a well kept home.
In conclusion, “Those Winter Sundays” uses imagery, diction, an emotional appeal to grasp the reader's attention. The last line of the poem reiterates the child regrets of not showing his father appreciation “what did I know, what did I know” What did I know is repeated to twice to show
A short poem similar to “Good Times” by Lucille Clifton normally would lack dimension and artistic value, however, through Clifton’s masterful writing and specific use of repetition, she elevates the poem to a noteworthy level, telling a complex story in a dense 18 lines. The short, repetitive poem lists an litany of momentary positives that juxtapose the more abundant times that are characterized by hardship. In focusing on “good times,” Clifton reveals the conflict between the present situation and previous memories. In “Good Times,” repetition is used in multiple ways to expose the complexity and depth of a single