those winter sundays essay 200 words

Those Winter Sundays Summary & Analysis by Robert Hayden

• Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis
• Poetic Devices
• Vocabulary & References
• Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme
• Line-by-Line Explanations

"Those Winter Sundays" is a poem by Robert Hayden written in 1962. In the poem, an adult speaker reflects on how, when he was a child, his father would get up early on Sunday mornings throughout the winter in order to light a fire and warm up the house before anyone else got out of bed. At the time the speaker failed to appreciate this, as well as the other ways his father expressed affection for his family. Only upon looking back at these memories as an adult does he understand the often selfless and thankless nature of love.

• Read the full text of “Those Winter Sundays”

The Full Text of “Those Winter Sundays”

“those winter sundays” summary, “those winter sundays” themes.

Family and Parenting

Growing Up and Memory

• Lines 11-14

Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “Those Winter Sundays”

Sundays too my ... ... the blueblack cold,

then with cracked ... ... ever thanked him.

I’d wake and ... ... of that house,

Lines 10-12

Speaking indifferently to ... ... shoes as well.

Lines 13-14

What did I ... ... and lonely offices?

“Those Winter Sundays” Symbols

• Line 5: “banked fires blaze”
• Line 6: “the cold splintering, breaking”
• Line 7: “the rooms were warm”
• Line 11: “driven out the cold”

“Those Winter Sundays” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language

Alliteration.

• Line 2: “c,” “c”
• Line 3: “c”
• Line 4: “w,” “w”
• Line 5: “b,” “b”
• Line 7: “W,” “w,” “w”
• Line 14: “l,” “l”
• Line 2: “o,” “a,” “o”
• Line 3: “a,” “a,” “a,” “a”
• Line 4: “a,” “a,” “a”
• Line 5: “a,” “a,” “a”
• Line 6: “a,” “i,” “i,” “ea,” “i”
• Line 8: “I,” “i”
• Line 10: “i,” “i,” “i,” “i”
• Line 13: “o,” “o”
• Line 14: “o,” “o,” “au,” “o,” “o”
• Line 5: “blaze. No”
• Line 6: “splintering, breaking”
• Line 7: “warm, he’d”
• Line 13: “know, what”
• Line 2: “cl,” “bl,” “bl,” “ck,” “c,” “l,” “d”
• Line 3: “c,” “ck,” “d,” “nd,” “ch,” “d”
• Line 4: “l,” “w,” “k,” “d,” “w,” “d”
• Line 5: “b,” “nk,” “d,” “b,” “l,” “nk,” “d”
• Line 6: “k,” “c,” “l,” “l,” “k”
• Line 7: “W,” “r,” “m,” “w,” “r,” “w,” “r,” “m”
• Line 8: “s,” “l,” “w,” “l,” “w”
• Line 11: “d,” “d,” “d”
• Line 12: “d,” “sh,” “d,” “d,” “sh,” “ll”
• Line 13: “W,” “d,” “d,” “kn,” “w,” “d,” “d,” “kn”
• Line 14: “l,” “s,” “s,” “l,” “l,” “c,” “s”

End-Stopped Line

• Line 2: “cold,”
• Line 5: “him.”
• Line 6: “breaking.”
• Line 7: “call,”
• Line 8: “dress,”
• Line 9: “house,”
• Line 10: “him,”
• Line 12: “well.”
• Line 14: “offices?”
• Lines 1-2: “early / and”
• Lines 3-4: “ached / from”
• Lines 4-5: “made / banked”
• Lines 11-12: “cold / and”
• Lines 13-14: “know / of”
• Line 13: “What did I know, what did I know”

Rhetorical Question

• Lines 13-14: “What did I know, what did I know / of love’s austere and lonely offices?”

“Those Winter Sundays” Vocabulary

Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.

• Indifferently
• (Location in poem: Line 2: “blueblack”)

Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “Those Winter Sundays”

Rhyme scheme, “those winter sundays” speaker, “those winter sundays” setting, literary and historical context of “those winter sundays”, more “those winter sundays” resources, external resources.

Hayden's Childhood — A brief interview segment that mentions Hayden's upbringing.  

A Reading by Hayden — The poem read by the poet himself. 

Hayden at the Brockport Writers Forum — Hayden reads his poetry and discusses his influences.  

Hayden's Life and Work — A valuable resource about Hayden from the Poetry Foundation. 

Hayden and the Academy of American Poets — Hayden's written response to being nominated to the prestigious Academy of American Poets. 

Ask LitCharts AI: The answer to your questions

A Summary and Analysis of Robert Hayden’s ‘Those Winter Sundays’

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

‘Those Winter Sundays’ is a 1962 poem by the American poet and essayist Robert Hayden (1913-80). It is probably his most widely anthologised and frequently studied poem, and arose from Hayden’s own conflicted feelings towards his foster father.

The poem is divided into three stanzas of, respectively, five lines, four lines, and five lines. In the first stanza, the speaker of the poem recalls how on Sundays his father would get up early and put his clothes on while it was extremely cold.

His hands, which ached from hard work out in the cold weather all week, had cracked skin. He would use those hands to light fires to warm the family, but nobody ever thanked him for doing this.

In the second stanza, the speaker recalls waking up to hear the cold air breaking as the warmth of the fire spread through the house. Once the rooms of the house had warmed up, his father would call to him and he would slowly get up and get dressed, afraid of the ‘angers’ that he had experienced in the house: namely, the anger of his father.

The poem’s third and final stanza then sees the speaker remembering how he would speak in an indifferent or uncaring manner to his father, even though this was the man who had driven the cold weather out of the house. His father had also polished his son’s smart shoes (ready for church, perhaps?).

The poem ends with the speaker chastising himself for being ignorant, as a young boy, of the hard and lonely things people do for love – such as his father performing these thankless tasks in the cold, all for the love of his family.

Hayden’s poem is often analysed alongside Theodore Roethke’s ‘ My Papa’s Waltz ’ (1948), another twentieth-century American poem in which the poet expresses his ambivalent feelings towards his father.

In both ‘Those Winter Sundays’ and Roethke’s poem, the child is now an adult and has a broader and deeper understanding of the world, although Hayden’s poem more explicitly gives voice to the adult poet’s more sympathetic appreciation of what his father was like, while he also rebukes his own immaturity and thanklessness in the face of his father’s ‘austere and lonely offices’.

The word ‘offices’ here carries the meaning of ‘a position of work or service’, as in ‘office of state’; the word also carries a religious flavour, as in ‘holy office’, which is appropriate to the poem for two reasons: its Sunday setting, and the devotional nature of the father’s kind actions for his family.

The poem ushers us into the poet’s confidence with its colloquial opening (‘Sundays too’, as if he had already been engaging us in conversation about his childhood memories), powerfully summoning the cold winters with the harsh plosive consonants (‘blueblack’) and the hard ‘k’ sounds (‘cold’, ‘cracked’, ‘ached’).

The caesura or mid-line pause in the fifth line brings the description of the fire’s effects on the house to a close, the (almost) five-line sentence giving way to a second, much shorter five- word statement of fact: ‘No one ever thanked him.’

The second stanza moves from the father’s activities elsewhere in the house to the speaker’s own actions: in marked contrast to his father’s active work, the boy gets up ‘slowly’ and then, in the next stanza, talks ‘indifferently’ to his father. Where his father clearly loves and cares for his family and his early morning actions reveal this, his son makes no effort to show his love in return.

Yet the poem is more complex than a simple act of self-castigation, whereby the adult speaker realises how unappreciative he was of his father’s kind labours.

There is something sinister lurking in the reference to the ‘chronic angers’ of the house: this ambiguous line suggests the violent creaking of the wood in the house (as the fire spreads through it and warms up the rooms), but also hints at an angry and sometimes tempestuous home life for the boy. His father works hard for the family all week, and there are, the poem suggests, occasional flare-ups of anger.

This is already prefigured in the violent ‘splintering’ and ‘breaking’ of the house as the fire becomes stronger: what is here carried out as an act of love and (literal) warmth also carries the potential for destruction.

The final two lines of ‘Those Winter Sundays’, however, returns us to the adult speaker’s regret at his ignorance: he did not realise how hard and lonely his father’s life could be, but now he is wiser and more mature, he understands. The repetition of the initial part of the question in the penultimate line, along with another caesura, gives both poet and reader pause: how foolish he was not to realise how much his father did for him and the family?

Hayden’s poem is interesting in terms of the form he uses to express these childhood reminiscences. ‘Those Winter Sundays’ has fourteen lines and some lines broadly follow an iambic pentameter metre, but although both of these features are associated with the sonnet , Hayden’s poem does not rhyme. This lends the poem a freer and more conversational feel which is appropriate for the intimate family memory being shared.

Moreover, ‘Those Winter Sundays’ does not stick slavishly to the iambic pentameter rhythm. Although the first line has ten syllables, as in the typical iambic pentameter line, it does not follow a strict iambic metre. The third line, meanwhile, contains just six syllables, or three iambs.

Although Hayden’s poem contains what T. S. Eliot referred to as the ‘ghost’ of a metre behind its lines, its family memories are cast into a looser and more relaxed form than strict pentameter would allow.

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Those Winter Sundays

By Robert Hayden

‘Those Winter Sundays’ by Robert Hayden is a three-stanza work where the sections vary in length, though the theme remains from start to finish.

Robert Hayden

Nationality: American

He was the first African American to be appointed as a Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress.

Poem Analyzed by Connie Smith

M.A. in English and Creative Writing from Northern Kentucky University

‘Those Winter Sundays’ by Robert Hayden is a three-stanza work where the sections vary in length, though the theme remains from start to finish. The poem is a narrative of a time when the speaker ’s father would care for his family in ways that went unappreciated, even though the speaker gives indications that the work done by his father was something worth appreciation. In fact, the speaker notes that he benefited from that work, but with no gratification shown toward his father. This concept is prevalent in lines of ‘ Those Winter Sundays’ , and eventually, it becomes clear that the un-thankful child has become an adult who criticizes his youthful lack of gratitude, though he links the fault with his early inability to understand his father’s struggles. In the end, it seems, the relationship faltered because of the division created by misunderstanding, and no inclination is given that it was ever repaired. The end result is a poem that is encumbered with guilt.

Those Winter Sundays Analysis

First stanza.

Sundays too my father got up early (…) banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.

Diving directly into a general recollection from his youth, the narrator begins the account of how hard the father worked to tend to his responsibilities, and there is plenty of evidence within the stanza to showcase the level of sacrifice and effort this work ethic required. In the first two lines, the reader can note one clue regarding the father’s ongoing work schedule since the speaker doesn’t just say “Sundays” were a day of work, but “Sundays too.” What that detail denotes is that the father has worked throughout the week, something that is such a given that the “weekday” workload does not need to be elaborately addressed.

On those “Sundays,” the work began “early” for this father, and he hardly started his efforts in pleasant circumstances. Instead, he had to commence his daily labors in “cold” and with lingering effects from prior workloads, like “cracked hands that ached.” It is worth noting as well that the only task that is specifically labeled in this first stanza is that he started the “fires ablaze,” which showcases care being extended toward his family that he himself did not experience. Remember, after all, that he “put his clothes on in the blueback cold.”

The first stanza of ‘ Those Winter Sundays’ ends with the declaration, though, that “No one ever thanked him.” This statement begins an impassioned case against the child who would let such actions go without a word of gratitude, given how much the father worked to ensure the child’s comfort and well-being.

Second Stanza

I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking. When the rooms were warm, he’d call, and slowly I would rise and dress, fearing the chronic angers of that house,

Once more, the reader is introduced to evidence that the father’s work ethic was great since the speaker is stating that he was not awake when the father started working. Rather, he would “wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.” By the time he was awoken by the “call” his father would send him, “the rooms were warm” already, which again shows a level of care from the father. He didn’t just start the fire to cater to his child, but he also didn’t “wake” his child from sleep until the room had lost its chill.

The child, it seemed, felt no rush to join his father in the daily chores since “slowly [he] would rise and dress,” so again the reader is met with indications that the father went out of his way to make the existence of his child better than his own. However, in the final line of this stanza, a confusing prospect is brought into the discussion in that, while the child seemingly had every reason to appreciate the father, he held some sort of fear in his living situation—he “fear[ed] the chronic angers of that house.”

There are a number of possible explanations, one being that the “house” itself was falling apart, and the adult who was once the child in this situation reminisce on these issues by labeling them “chronic angers.” If such is the case, the notion that the child was afraid of what the father dealt with creates another reason why the father was worthy of gratitude. As the child worried over the disrepair of the house, the father continued his duties in spite of the problems.

It is also possible, though, that these “chronic angers” are referenced as an indication of tension shared between the father and child. Already, the concept that the child neglected to show gratitude has been established, so the father knowing of this disregard and being hurt or resentful over it is conceivable.

A worse prospect is that the child could have neglected to thank the father out of resentment for some kind emotional neglect or physical abuse that the father inflicted on him, which would alter the theme of this poem. If that were the case, the child would have had reason to withhold his gratitude because of the poor treatment at the hands of his father, issues that ran much deeper than whether or not a fire was going in the mornings. With little else being said on the matter, the reader must wait until the final stanza to arrive at an informed decision on the matter. Whatever the “angers,” were, their “chronic” nature makes it clear that they were ongoing.

Third Stanza

Speaking indifferently to him, (…) of love’s  austere  and lonely offices?

In this stanza of ‘ Those Winter Sundays’ , it seems, the idea that the father is abusive loses a portion of possibility as the speaker admits that his father had been there for him against the “cold” and through preparing his “good shoes,” and because the speaker in his older years describes his father’s feelings for him as “love.” He pairs that idea with “austere,” indicating a strict environment, and that detail could grant the missing information from the second stanza. The reason for the tension, “the chronic angers,” could be that the father was strict (not abusive) in his parenting in a way that a child would resent.

This idea is further cemented since the speaker does not seem to hold the same tension toward his father that he had in his youth—such as how he “[spoke] indifferently to” his father. Instead, the speaker seems to have applied years of wisdom and growth to the situation to conclude that as a child, he simply had not understood: “What did I know, what did I know/ of love’s austere and lonely offices.”

If this logic is applied to the entire poem, readers can infer that the speaker now sympathizes with his father since he can now understand why his father was stern and how “lonely” his parenthood had to be given the tension between them—particularly since no other characters are referenced as having been a part of their household. What used to be frustration toward the father seems to have turned into frustration with himself because his father was never granted the gratitude he’d rightly earned.

Overall, the reader can leave this poem feeling the regret of youth wasted and a relationship that was never healed, and that grief could be what Hayden intended as the lingering detail of the work. Time and misunderstanding separated the father and child, regardless of the “love” present, and that separation was never overcome.

About Robert Hayden

Robert Hayden was a 20th-century poet whose works are renowned not only for their literary capacity, but also from a social perspective . One of the most significant honors of Hayden’s career as a writer was to be the first African American Consultant of Poetry for the United States Congress, and many of his works were constructed with his interest in history in mind—particularly African American history.

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AMAZING ANALYSIS!!! Themes needed though

I’d say fatherhood and the weather (in particular the cold) are the primary themes.

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Smith, Connie. "Those Winter Sundays by Robert Hayden". Poem Analysis , https://poemanalysis.com/robert-hayden/those-winter-sundays/ . Accessed 30 June 2024.

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Those Winter Sundays: Analysis Essay

• To find inspiration for your paper and overcome writer’s block
• As a source of information (ensure proper referencing)
• As a template for you assignment

“Those Winter Sundays” is a reflective poem about a son’s memories. The speaker recalls scenarios in which a father dutifully rose early every Sunday to light a fire and polish his son’s shoes. While these actions seem mundane at the time, the child later realizes the depth of the sacrifices his father made as he sought to earn a living. Robert Hayden was raised in a foster home after being abandoned by his parents (Buck and Smith 1). While reading through the poem, audiences are often prompted to ask one important question. How does the speaker attempt to re-evaluate specific aspects of a traumatic upbringing? Hayden often remarked that his poetry was a means through which he understood and accepted reality (Buck and Smith 8). In addition, it served as an effective tool for the definition and discovery of the unknown. The poem’s emotional appeal stems from the speaker’s realization and appreciation of the parental love his father expressed through selflessness without the expectation of reciprocity.

“Those Winter Sundays” can be interpreted both geographically and historically. Hayden was a reputed African American poet who was often criticized for avoiding racial issues in his writing. Having grown up in Detroit in the 20s, he experienced the transformation of a city that was the epicenter of migratory activity as blacks sought opportunities for work in the North (Buck and Smith 1). His difficult upbringing, especially after his parents abandoned him as a baby, shaped his view of life. The tense scenario involving his biological mother and foster parents created an unsuitable environment for a child. Hayden’s experiences provide insight into the poem’s context and allow readers to derive meaning from the compact composition.

Each of the poem’s stanzas demonstrates the gravity of the sour relationship between a father and his son. The evidence of their cold and distant connection is seen in the speaker’s helplessness as he questions the present. It is evident that past household experiences and fears have shaped his persona. He gives the reader an intimate view of his Sunday mornings as a child. To illustrate the disconnect that characterized his early days, Hayden chooses to avoid using rhyme or consistent rhythms in the poem. In addition, he uses unusual syntax and alliteration in phrases such as “weekday weather, banked fires blaze” to create disordered music, which is a reflection of his home’s atmosphere (Hayden 1). This is similar to Thomas Hardy’s use of jerky rhythm in “The Man He Killed” to express doubt and uncertainty (Hardy 1). Hayden applies a reflective tone in an attempt to review the past. However, as the poem develops, the speaker gains perspective on his father’s role in his life.

The essence of parental duty and sacrifice is the poem’s central theme. The speaker struggles to understand whether love prevails in scenarios where a parent is not related to his child by blood. He wonders whether a strong bond can form between individuals even when the situation is less than ideal. It is evident, however, that it takes years for a child to acknowledge the existence of a connection. This is reflected in the phrase, “what did I know, what did I know, of love’s austere and lonely offices?” (Hayden 1). These lines present the views of a child trapped in a rather forbidding household as his father cleans shoes in readiness for Sunday mass. The language used demonstrates the intensity of the atmosphere, and the word “austere” highlights a serious and strict form of poverty. The phrase “lonely offices” implies that the father’s acts were a duty rather than a demonstration of love.

The complexity of the association between the father and the son is evident all through the poem. For instance, the word “father” is a formal reference to a male parent. It is closely linked to the belief in Christian selflessness and suffering to cater to others’ needs. The father worked long weeks, and his “cracked hands that ached” calmly lit a fire (Hayden 1). The phrase conjures up images of a sturdy manual laborer who works hard to provide for his family. In addition, he is practical and adheres to the Church’s principles regarding rest. The speaker’s mother is conspicuously absent in the narration. In addition, the word ‘home’ is never used, which demonstrates the lack of comfort. The child lives in rooms that gradually warm up as he wakes.

The speaker believes that his father is indifferent in addition to being a negative influence on his life. The father’s seriousness and aggression induced fear and confused the child’s perception of love and the reality of family life. The assertion that the house was permeated by “chronic angers” hints at an unhappy childhood (Hayden 1). It is also possible that the parent was prone to angry outbursts, which hid the fact that the parent expressed his love through labor. The son is evidently remorseful now that he realizes how he felt about his father’s actions (Marciano and Watson 340). The hardship of Hayden’s upbringing is portrayed in his father’s tenderness as he suffers through life’s challenges.

The father is evidently incapable of expressing love in conventionally accepted ways. The vicissitudes he experiences lead to the adoption of a serious demeanor that his son misinterprets as apathy. The truth, however, is that he demonstrated his affection by getting up early every morning to toil in the harsh world so that the people he cared about could get everything they needed. The poem strives to represent a form of love that transcends identity (Halperin 417). In retrospect, the speaker realizes the depth of his father’s affection when he laments that “no one ever thanked” him for his efforts to drive the cold away (Hayden 1). In a sense, while the parent physically warmed the house, he metaphorically warmed his children’s hearts. However, these actions were too complex for the child to understand at the time. The profundity of the child’s regret is intensified when he realizes that his father woke up early on Sundays despite having worked hard through the week. The speaker gradually comes to terms with the reality that despite the absence of a blood connection, his father loved him deeply.

The speaker looks back at his life with regret. He is initially convinced of his father’s apathy, given that he seldom expressed affection in conventional ways. It is essential to note that the absence of a rhyme scheme and the use of formal language highlight the strained relationship between father and son. However, maturity prompts the speaker to express the belief that if he had known what he knows now in the past, he would have behaved differently. The speaker’s experiences are relevant today because the family unit is evolving as adoption becomes common. Children are paired with non-biological parents who struggle to forge relationships in the face of traumatic experiences. The speaker’s view of the world has been altered by experience, given that he currently grasps concepts that had escaped him as a child. Like most adoptive parents, the speaker’s father selflessly gives up his life for his children and expects nothing in return.

Works Cited

Buck, Christopher, and Derik Smith. “Hayden, Robert.” Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Literature , 2019, pp. 1–16, doi:10.1093/acrefore/9780190201098.013.485.

Halperin, David M. “Queer Love.” Critical Inquiry , vol. 45, no. 2, 2019, pp. 396–419, doi:10.1086/700993.

Hardy, Thomas. “The Man He Killed.” The Poetry Foundation . Poetry Foundation, 2014.

Hayden, Robert. “Those Winter Sundays.” Academy of American Poets , 1966.

Marciano, Joanne E., and Vaughn W. M. Watson. “‘This Is America’: Examining Artifactual Literacies as Austere Love Across Contexts of Schools and Everyday Use.” Urban Review , vol. 53, no. 2, Springer Netherlands, 2021, pp. 334–53, doi:10.1007/s11256-020-00564-0.

• Those Winter Sundays: The Relations of a Father and a Son
• Employment Problem Solving: Fran Hayden Case
• The Role of Family in American Poems and Short Stories
• Analysis of "Neither out far nor in Deep" by Robert Frost
• Analysis of "Mending Wall "by Robert Frost
• Analysis of "Nothing Gold can stay" by Robert Frost
• Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird: Poem Analysis
• The Impact of Change in Ovid’s Metamorphoses
• Chicago (A-D)
• Chicago (N-B)

IvyPanda. (2022, July 16). Those Winter Sundays: Analysis. https://ivypanda.com/essays/those-winter-sundays-poem-by-robert-hayden-essay-examples/

"Those Winter Sundays: Analysis." IvyPanda , 16 July 2022, ivypanda.com/essays/those-winter-sundays-poem-by-robert-hayden-essay-examples/.

IvyPanda . (2022) 'Those Winter Sundays: Analysis'. 16 July.

IvyPanda . 2022. "Those Winter Sundays: Analysis." July 16, 2022. https://ivypanda.com/essays/those-winter-sundays-poem-by-robert-hayden-essay-examples/.

1. IvyPanda . "Those Winter Sundays: Analysis." July 16, 2022. https://ivypanda.com/essays/those-winter-sundays-poem-by-robert-hayden-essay-examples/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "Those Winter Sundays: Analysis." July 16, 2022. https://ivypanda.com/essays/those-winter-sundays-poem-by-robert-hayden-essay-examples/.

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How to Make a Poem

The journey from idea to draft.

Writing Ideas

1. Write a poem about one of your parents or grandparents. Think about the work they do every day, and describe one of their seemingly simple routines—doing laundry, for example. Like Hayden, try to use as many sense images as you can: how does their task sound to you? When do they do it?

2. “Those Winter Sundays” alternates between very concrete images, like “cracked hands that ached from labor,” and more abstract ones, like “the chronic angers of that house.” Think about the effect of the two kinds of images—what do you picture when you read the final line of the poem, for example? Try writing a poem that uses both concrete and abstract images to describe an event you remember, either from the distant or more recent past.

Discussion Questions

1. How does Hayden characterize the relationship between father and son in the poem? Try to find particular words that seem to suggest more than one meaning and think about how they contribute to both the literal and emotional world of the poem.

2. The poem features an adult speaker looking back on his childhood. What does the son feel about his father now, and what did he feel then? Try to find particular images in the poem that expose the difference in the speaker’s childhood and adult understanding of his father.

3. How does sound knit the poem together? Pick one sound—the hard “c” in “clothes,” for example—and trace it through the poem. Why would Hayden use so many of the same sounds in his poem? What do the sounds make you think of?

4. “Those Winter Sundays” ends with a rhetorical question. What is the effect of the poem’s final question? How do you feel about the speaker by the end of the poem?

Teaching Tips

1. Begin by having students create ad hoc sketches of the most striking or dominant image found in the three stanzas of the poem. Have them follow up their illustration with a discussion about the physical position of each of the human characters in their illustrations, considering how these emblematic images relate to the meaning of the poem.

2. Have students consider the dominant sounds in each stanza and look back on their sketches to see if they can detect patterns and variations among sounds, as they are associated with each character and with the larger meaning of the work.

3. After each activity, have students examine their findings and discuss the relationship between the father and son in this poem. Ask, how does Hayden depict the father’s relationship with his son? What seems to motivate each of these characters? How does the son reflect on his father’s actions at the moment he speaks this text?

4. Have students view the video animation of the poem, and discuss the animator’s choices, evaluating the selection of images and their connection to the text.

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This poem has learning resources.

Poet Robert Hayden was born Asa Bundy Sheffey into a poor family in the Paradise Valley neighborhood of Detroit; he had an emotionally traumatic childhood and was raised in part by foster parents. Due to extreme nearsightedness, Hayden turned to books rather than sports in...

• Coming of Age
• Relationships
• Family & Ancestors
• Gratitude & Apologies
• Father's Day

Those Winter Sundays by Robert Hayden— Poem Analysis

Below, you will find an analysis of the poem ‘Those Winter Sundays’ by Robert Hayden. This is a beautiful, simple poem on the surface: a man remembers his childhood as a boy, realising that he didn’t appreciate everything his father did for him. The father seemed cold and distant, but all his suffering and difficult actions were a show of love.

Yet, when we delve deeper, more complex questions arise. Robert Hayden had a difficult childhood, raised in a foster home that was fraught with tension and anger — could it be instead that he is looking back on the lack of love in his home? Perhaps, instead, it is about the way in which providing for a child in terms of money, heating, food and clothes is not a substitute for true parental love.

This analysis is tailored towards GCSE and A Level students on the following exam boards: CIE / Cambridge, Edexcel, WJEC, OCR, CCEA, AQA. However, it’s also useful for anyone studying the poem at all higher levels.

Thanks for reading! If you find this resource useful, you can take a look at the full CIE Cambridge Poetry course here .

Those Winter Sundays

Robert Hayden

“Sundays too my father got up early

and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,

then with cracked hands that ached

from labor in the weekday weather made

banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.”

(Full poem unable to be reproduced due to copyright)

Blueblack  — a mixture of a blue and black colour

Austere  — harsh, serious, strict, emotionally cold, no comfort or luxury.

Chronic  — something that happens all the time, can relate to pain or suffering

Indifferently  — not caring or being emotional about something, neither good or bad.

STORY/SUMMARY

Stanza 1 : The speaker’s father woke up early on cold Sunday mornings. The father is a physical labourer as he works outside and has sore hands. The persona remarks that nobody was grateful for his effort.

Stanza 2 : The persona would hear his father wake up and as the father woke up he would heat the house for the speaker and presumably the rest of the family. The persona also feels the constant pain his father is in, and the house seems to reflect this pain.

Stanza 3 : The persona speaks unemotionally to the father, despite the fact that the father put so much effort in to get the house warm and also polished the boy’s shoes. He says he didn’t understand at the time that the father’s behaviour was an act of love because he seemed cold and distant.

SPEAKER / VOICE

• The speaker is a man  reflecting on his past  and his apathy toward his father when the speaker was a child.
• A  reflective tone  of voice, looking back, trying to make sense of all that was going on, all that had happened. Over a period of time, probably years, the speaker gains some perspective on the role of his father, but there are still loose ends to tie up.
• It’s clear that the speaker has matured a lot since his childhood, and he can now recognize his father’s labor in and outside of the home as a form of love. Or alternatively, perhaps he is reflecting on how his father providing for him in terms of comforts was not a true substitute for a deeper, loving bond of friendship and respect.
• Our lack of knowledge of the speaker is part of what makes the poem speak to so many people — we can all visualise ourselves in the speaker’s position, as a child who doesn’t understand his/her parents. Many people respond to this poem because they see themselves in it.

LANGUAGE FEATURES

• Hayden uses the  term of address  “father” instead of Papa, Daddy, or Dad, this term being more formal also ties in with the idea of a selfless Christian father figure, a man who endures suffering for the sake of others.
• Alliteration  -”weekday weather”- the image underscores the stability of a home and its capacity to create a safe, warm environment for the father’s child and to put a roof over his head so that he is protected from everyday hardships and difficulties.
• Plosive Alliteration  — The father creates “banked fires” and makes them “blaze” to create a comfortable environment for his son. The repetition of the plosive ‘b’ sound emphasises the force and power of the fires.
• Harsh consonant sounds/ Dissonance  – ”cold,” “cracked,” and “ached” to evoke the harshness of the speaker’s father’s life. The ‘k’ sound sticks in the throat, perhaps evoking hardship or the speaker’s own difficult emotions as he looks back on his childhood and thinks about how ungrateful he was for his father’s efforts.
• Metonymy  — this is created in line 9 by using “the house” to represent the people in it. It is  personified  as having ‘chronic anger’, which reflect the emotions of the individuals that live there — the tension and difficulty they experience.
• Assonance  — the  repetition of vowel sounds  in the same line, the sound of /o/ in “put his clothes on in the blue black cold” — ‘clothes’ and ‘cold’ — create a connecting sound — this underscores the harsh environment as we realise it is very unpleasant for the father to dress in those conditions.
• ‘Cracked hands’ — the  assonance  underscores the  visual image  and creates a sticking, painful sound that helps us to imagine the father’s pain and suffering.
• Metaphor  — “I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.” — Here, the poet compares cold with a solid object that can splinter and break. This is metaphorical because it suggests that the father has an ability to battle the cold, to protect his family from it. However, it may also be a literal  auditory image  as the pipes of the house are heating up for the day, and in old houses, these pipes tend to make a cracking sound as they start to warm up.
• Visual imagery  — “And put his clothes on in the blue-black cold” / “Then with cracked hands that ached” / “and polished my good shoes as well.” The speaker uses imagery to show the chilling, sullen aura of their home and the cruel lifestyle that the father had to go through. The phrase ‘polished my good shoes’ suggests that the father worked hard to make sure the boy looked nice and had nice clothes to wear — he’s paid for good shoes and he’s the one who spends time polishing them to make sure they shine. In a way, the attention he gives to the shoes could be an indirect act of love towards the boy, the  continuous verb  ‘polishing’ demonstrates in a  metaphorical  sense the way in which the father nurtures his relationship with the boy by showing these small acts of kindness and love, however at the time these acts are unappreciated and the boy is not perceptive enough to understand that this is how his father shows love.
• Synesthetic imagery  — “And put his clothes on in the blue black cold.” Hayden uses color to describe a feeling — the cold is turning the speaker’s skin blue, the colour of a bruise (which signifies pain) and it also references the purplish colour of the morning as it starts to turn light.

STRUCTURE/FORM

• No rhyme scheme  — the poem is not musical, but practical — like the father and the type of atmosphere that the speaker grew up in.
• Iambic pentameter —  The poem uses iambic pentameter such as in the line “and  put/  his  clothes/  on  in / the  blue/ black  cold ”. Here, you can see there are five feet per line (a foot is made up of two syllables). Each foot is comprised of unstressed- stressed  syllables. Poets use iambic pentameter to create a natural, conversational speech-like rhythm to their poems. It is also called  rising metre  and has a sense that ideas or moments are progressing and growing.
• Open form structure —  with no set stanza length or line length, the stanzas roughly irregular with a 4–5–4 line structure. Perhaps the semi-regularity demonstrates the way in which the father tried to impose some kind of order on his family’s life through his work and positive gestures.
• Split into 3 stanzas —  Each stanza contributes to evoking different emotions and builds to support the underlying theme.
• Short sentences  — ‘No one ever thanked him.’ — this is very abrupt and sudden, similar to the speaker’s sudden realisation of how harshly he himself treated his father by not demonstrating gratitude or helping him in any way.

Tension  — there is an underlying feeling of tension created in the line ‘the chronic angers of the house’, we assume that the ‘angers of the house’ shows tension between family members, the adjective ‘chronic’ implies that they are always there and affecting the house and its atmosphere constantly.

• Sunday > significant for its religious implication.
• In Christian tradition, Christ died on the cross to save the souls of mankind. This was his obligation, his duty in life for the benefit of his “children.”  The father in the poem is likened to Christ  as a figure who suffers a lot for the benefit of his family. > ‘ martyr ’
• The words ‘labour’ and ‘weekday weather’ suggest that the family is from a  working class background  with low income, hence the difficulty that the father has to endure in terms of working to support his family and keeping the house running.
• Hayden is an  African   American poet , and he wrote this poem in  1962, but he is looking back on his childhood in the 1920s/1930s, growing up in a ghetto in Detroit .
• The poem could be an extract from a diary, told to someone close, perhaps another family member of a future generation.
• Hayden had a difficult childhood, his parents separated before birth and he was fostered by his neighbours. However, the foster parents also had difficulties and his own biological mother also competed for his affections — he often experienced fights and beatings break out, as well as suffering from sight problems and being bullied at school.
• Parental love
• Selflessness
• Reciprocity
• Parental sacrifice
• The Nature of Love

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Those Winter Sundays

Sundays too my father got up early And put his clothes on in the blue black cold, Then with cracked hands that ached from labor in the weekday weather made banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him. I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breking. when the rooms were warm, he’d call, and slowly I would rise and dress, fearing the chronic angers of that house, Speaking indifferently to him, who had driven out the cold and polished my good shoes as well. What did I know, what did I know of love’s austere and lonely offices?

Summary of Those Winter Sundays

Analysis of literary devices in “those winter sundays”.

“who had driven out the cold and polished my good shoes as well.”

“What did I know, what did I know of love’s austere and lonely offices?”

Analysis of Poetic Devices in “Those Winter Sundays”

“ I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breking. when the rooms were warm, he’d call, and slowly I would rise and dress, fearing the chronic angers of that house.”

Quotes to be Used

“Sundays too my father got up early And put his clothes on in the blue black cold, Then with cracked hands that ached from labor in the weekday weather made banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.”

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Those Winter Sundays

Robert Hayden’s heartbreaking song of ice and fire.

“His work… gives his imagination wings, allows him to travel throughout human nature.” Lewis Turco, Michigan Quarterly Review

Older readers may have to think back a way; younger readers I bet can easily relate; if you’ve got children yourself I guarantee you’ll recognise the relationship in today’s poem by Robert Hayden . Be honest – everyone, at some point, doesn’t appreciate their parents enough. Even the saintliest child occasionally moans and complains about mum and dad being embarrassing, not loving us enough, not getting us, and the like. Robert Hayden’s speaker was guilty of this; he admits to  speaking indifferently and  never thanked his father for his quiet attentions. The speaker has, belatedly, come to realise the unspoken love behind his father’s small, everyday actions; this poem can be seen as his effort at reconciliation, a poignant admission of his earlier mistakes.

The central image in the poem is of his father rising early in the cold winter mornings –  Sundays too implies he does this every day – and stoking a fire to warm the house while his son still sleeps. It’s a lovely gesture,  symbolic of a father’s gentle warmth and love. The poem acknowledges the father’s stoicism in the face of hardship:  his cracked hands that ached from labor in the weekday don’t keep him from this small act of kindness. Typically, it goes unappreciated by his petulant son. The word ‘love’ isn’t spoken in the poem until the final line, but throughout it simmers under the surface like glowing embers in a smouldering fireplace. Hayden’s poem neatly illustrates the truth of the old aphorism: ‘actions speak louder than words.’

It’s easy for the reader to associate fire with love. The  symbolism  is well-worn; love is ‘hot like the sun,’ or  warm like an evening fire. Passion can be ‘fiery,’ ‘blood can burn.’ The list goes on, so much so that using fire as a metaphor for love risks being cliché. We use the word ‘frigid’ to describe somebody who doesn’t seem to feel passion, and speak of love melting somebody’s ‘frozen heart.’ Some of these associations are at play in Hayden’s poem, although they are muted; appropriate for the unspoken love a gruff father displays for his family. It’s there if you look carefully enough (something the speaker wishes he had been able to do). The comfort love can bring is expressed through  warm ; consistency and reliability through  Sundays too ; the resolve of someone who is quiet yet insistent is there in  he’d call . The relatability of the symbolism actually strengthens Hayden’s poem; the emotion it conveys is universal. Twice love rages:  banked fire blaze and  driven out the cold . These moments convey the transformational power of small, loving gestures and are all the more effective because they are so rare. If you have a withdrawn, stoic father who can nevertheless stand his ground when it matters, you should be able to recognise this figure in Hayden’s poem. 

Maybe the frostiness in the house is not all the child’s fault. I get the feeling that the father was a difficult person to get close to. His taciturn, formal character is strongly implied through  form : the deliberate arrangement of lines into  stanzas  evokes a formality just by looking at the page. The  diction of the poem (with notable exceptions) is spare, almost undecorated. On three occasions Hayden employs  hendiadys (the linking of two related words using ‘ and ’): in both  wake and hear, rise and dress ,  hendiadys evokes the formality of the family’s morning ritual. Everything the father does is mannerly and considered. Polishing  good shoes (another  symbol  of formality), stoking a fire, the morning wake-up call – so formal are his actions and interactions, you might be forgiven for thinking he was a servant or butler. The description of the fire as  banked means to be covered in coal dust, a practice that meant the fire would burn longer, and that happily also provides a visual  metaphor suggesting his father is capable of feeling great love, but keeps it hidden behind other aspects of his  austere character. 

The father’s austerity is suggested also by poetic form. Quickly count the total number of lines in the poem – fourteen lines indicates the poem is a sonnet . But, apart from the subject matter ( there is a long literary context of sonnets being written about love ) not much else really fulfils the expectations of the sonnet form. At the very least a sonnet should be written in iambic pentameter and have a rhyme scheme ; Hayden’s poem isn’t rhymed and, at first glance, doesn’t scan easily into iambs. Let’s look more closely at the first stanza, though, this time with accents marked:

Sūndays/ tōo my/ fāther/ gōt up/ ēarly/ and pūt/ his clōthes/ on īn/ the blūe/ black cōld,/  then wīth/ cracked hānds/ that āched/ from lā/ bor īn/ the wēek/ day wēa/ ther māde/ bānked/ fīres/ blāze./ Nō one/ ēver/ thānked him./

Like the father – who keeps his emotions hidden under a layer of inscrutable stiffness – Hayden’s sonnet only occasionally allows its true form to emerge. The rhythm ( meter ) is a case in point. The opening line is pointedly not iambic. As you can see, each and every foot is reversed (a stressed-unstressed foot is called a trochee – pronounced ‘trocky’). Lines two and four are recognisable as iambic pentameter ; the third line is truncated. In the final line Hayden arranges three stressed syllables in a row: bānked/ fīres/ blāze./ At the moment of lighting the fire, the pattern of stresses perfectly conveys the deep well of emotion that the young version of the speaker failed to recognise, contained in this selfless gesture. And what about rhyme? It’s unarguable that there’s no rhyme scheme – but that doesn’t stop the occasional internal rhyme from creeping in: black/cracked and banked/thanked are subtle nods towards the sonnet’s conventional requirement for rhyme.

Having discussed fire, we should also appreciate Hayden’s use of  cold as an opposite but equal  symbol . The  winter setting defines the atmosphere of the house and also expresses different aspects of love: for example, bitterness; the rancour that can come from living together in close confines; tension that comes from miscommunication. There is a connection between the frosty atmosphere of the house ( cold  is  repeated  three times:  blueblack  cold ,  cold splintering and  driven out the  cold ) and the reserved,  austere personality of the father. At times, Hayden uses  cold as a  symbol  for the way it can be hard to display love and affection, especially considering the way a man in early 20 th century America might be expected to behave towards his son. As you can see from the last lines of the poem, it’s easy to misinterpret: our speaker asks,  what did I know of love’s… lonely offices?  Above all though, we can recognise the devotion of a father who everyday suffers the cold alone so his son doesn’t have to. 

In order to see this most clearly it is worth comparing and contrasting the father’s morning experience in stanza one with that of the son in stanza two. Take the simple actions of my father g o t u p and p u t his c lothes on in the b lue b la ck c ol d . The combination of plosive (P), guttural (hard C) and even dental (D and T) is potent. All three are good at evoking negative feelings – mixed together they make even these few simple actions sound unbearably hard for an old man suffering chronic pain in his fingers. Now take a look at the son’s lines:

When the rooms were warm, he’d call, and slowly I would rise and dress

All those hard sounds have vanished, to be replaced with soft, warm W alliteration ( w hen, w arm, slo w ly, w ould ) and sibilance ( s lowly, ri s e and dre ss ). The combination helps each sound reinforce the other. Together they are warm and fuzzy, illustrating how much the father’s small actions make the scene more comfortable for his son. The message couldn’t be clearer: he suffers so his son doesn’t have to.

In all honesty, all the other poetic features of the poem pale beside Hayden’s manipulation of  sound . Think of two things before you reread the poem. One: huddling round a bonfire late at night and hearing it spit and crack and sizzle in the dark. Two: putting ice cubes straight from the freezer into a glass of tepid water and hearing them splinter and crack. Once you’ve done this, read the poem out loud again. Do you hear it sparkling and crackling like flames on a cold, dark morning? Do you hear the sharp crack of ice splitting apart? Hayden’s poem is a masterclass in how to let the natural sounds of carefully chosen words energise a scene. The secret is in the  guttural C, K or CK  alliteration that spits off the page like flames darting into the night. Take a deep breath, here we go:  bluebla ck c old;  c ra ck ed; a ch ed; wee k day; ban k ed; than k ed; wa k e;  c old; brea k ing;  c all;  ch roni c ; spea k ing;  and a final  cold.  As well as summoning images of fire and cracking ice, this sound links to his father’s  cracked hands through association with sharp pain, and even faintly evokes the ‘fractured’ relationship between father and son. There are other sounds at work here too, often  plosive , that combine with  guttural  to intensify the effect. I’m sure you picked out  alliterative pairs such as  b lue b lack,  w eekday  w eather,  b anked/ b laze.

Although the father is the nominal subject of the poem, the speaker’s own personality comes across strongly too. He appears something of an ingrate, not least when he tells us bluntly,  no one ever thanked him , and  speaking indifferently . It’s like he felt his father was below him, not worth any attention. Did the speaker look down on his father, feel he was ‘below him’ in some way?  Cracked hands that ached  and  labor in the weekday tell us he was a manual labourer.  Form plays it’s part here. Ask yourself why the poem is  unrhymed , and consider what that suggests about the distance between the two. There’s definitely some unspoken  anger between father and son, and the word  chronic means ‘incurable’: it was never resolved. There is a clue in the last word of the poem:  offices . Years ago, ‘offices’ was much closer in meaning to the word ‘duties’ than it is today. A little information about Hayden’s life might throw some light on this choice of word: his biological parents separated before his birth in Detroit in 1913 and he was brought up largely in foster care. His biography describes his home life as ‘tumultuous,’ reproduced here in the phrase  chronic angers of that house .  Offices suggests he used to feel his parents brought him up more out of duty than love. It’s normally a mistake to assume the speaker of a poem is the same person as the writer, but there is probably more than a little of Robert Hayden’s true life experience in  Those Winter Sundays . It’s easy to see how, years later, Hayden might look back on these times through older, wiser eyes and understand the stoking of the fire as a small gesture containing all the unspoken love that his father couldn’t say aloud. 

Redemption and reconciliation come movingly at the end when he asks  repeatedly (a nice touch strongly conveying the depth of his regret):  What did I know, what did I know? We understand that he finally understands. But… did you notice the disappearance of all those  guttural sounds – the fire provided by his father – from the last two lines? The inference is clear; the chance has gone. The powerful sadness of this poem comes from our realisation that the love between the two always remained unspoken and unrecognised… until it was too late. 

Suggested poems for comparison:

• My Papa’s Waltz by Theodore Roethke

Remember standing on your dad’s feet and ‘dancing’ around the kitchen? In this poem, Roethke looks back at his relationship with his father, expressed in the way they danced together late at night before bedtime.

• Elegy for my Father’s Father by James K. Baxter

This wonderful poem presents another taciturn father figure who, despite his reserved and formal character, possessed a bright and vivid inner life.

Additional Resources

If you are teaching or studying  Those Winter Sundays at school or college, or if you simply enjoyed the analysis and would like to discover more, you could download a bespoke study bundle for this poem. Costing only £2, you can find the bundle for Those Winter Sundays – and lots more poems – in the shop. The resources include: 

• 4 pages of activities that can be printed and folded into a booklet for use in class, at home, for self-study or revision.
• Study Questions with guidance on how to answer in full paragraphs. 
• A sample Point, Evidence, Explanation paragraph for essay writing. 
• An interactive and editable powerpoint, giving line-by-line analysis of all the poetic and technical features of the poem. 
• An in-depth worksheet with a focus on the way Robert Hayden employs alliteration and consonance to create effects in the poem.
• A fun crossword-quiz, perfect for a recap activity or revision.
• 4 practice Essay Questions – and one complete model Essay Plan.

And… discuss!

How did you respond to Those Winter Sundays ? Were you moved by the ending or did the poem leave you cold? What sounds did you hear when you read the poem for yourself? Leave a comment and let other readers know what you think. And, for daily nuggets of analysis and all-new illustrations, don’t forget to find and follow Poetry Prof on Instagram.

11 comments

Glad you like the blog, Diane. Hope to see you on some of our other pages soon.

is a proseprof.com a work in progress 😅

also is there material on the poem ode on melancholy

And also ‘cetacean’ and in ‘praise of creation’ would be great help

I’m actually working on Cetacean now. As you can imagine, each poem takes a while. I hope to have it up in the next couple of weeks. As for the other two poems you mentioned, hopefully I’ll be getting around to them at some point soon. Watch this space!

That’s a brilliant idea! Unfortunately, Poetryprof has only just started and it is already more than enough to keep me busy. Perhaps when I retire… but that’s a long way off yet.

I’m glad you like the blog. See you on some of our other pages soon.

Hey Mr. Poetryprof,

I dont know if you are gonna read this but damn, your analysis on these poems are super detailed and insightful. They are really helpful for my igcses. Just wanted to take a moment to appreciate your quality, top-notch analyses for completely free and no ads.

Hey Mr Boi,

Thank you for your kind words. I’m really happy you enjoy the blogs, and hope they continue to be helpful to you. Best of luck with your studies!

Just a quick comment to point out that in your Those Winter Sundays resources the final line is incorrect. Songs of Ourselves (and other sources) have the following for the final two lines of the poem:

What did I know, what did I know of love’s austere and lonely offices?

Your powerpoint says : austere and frozen offices.

Thank you for your comment. You’re right – I’ve made the change so the final line now reads ‘austere and lonely offices’ in the PPT presentation.

Thanks again!

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Home — Essay Samples — Literature — Those Winter Sundays — Analysis Of The Poem Those Winter Sundays

Analysis of The Poem Those Winter Sundays

• Categories: Those Winter Sundays

About this sample

Words: 453 |

Published: Dec 16, 2021

Words: 453 | Page: 1 | 3 min read

Works Cited

• Hayden, R. (1962). Those Winter Sundays. In: Collected Poems of Robert Hayden. Liveright Publishing Corporation.
• Burt, S. (2019). The Poem That Will Make You Cry: "Those Winter Sundays" by Robert Hayden. Poetry Foundation. Retrieved from: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/articles/69981/the-poem-that-will-make-you-cry-those-winter-sundays-by-robert-hayden
• Beavers, H. (2015). Poem Analysis: Those Winter Sundays by Robert Hayden. Owlcation. Retrieved from: https://owlcation.com/humanities/Poem-Analysis-Those-Winter-Sundays-by-Robert-Hayden
• Fagan, D. (2018). An analysis of Robert Hayden’s "Those Winter Sundays". LetterPile. Retrieved from: https://letterpile.com/poetry/An-Analysis-of-Robert-Haydens-Those-Winter-Sundays
• Hirsch, E. D. (2013). A Poet of Grandeur and Inequity. The New York Times. Retrieved from: https://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/24/books/review/a-poet-of-grandeur-and-inequity.html
• Anderson, D. (2012). Domestic violence in "Those Winter Sundays" by Robert Hayden. Grin Verlag.
• Lee, L. (2015). The Prosody of Robert Hayden's "Those Winter Sundays". Prosody Matters. Retrieved from: http://prosodymatters.blogspot.com/2015/05/the-prosody-of-robert-haydens-those.html
• Miller, R. (2019). Exploring 'Those Winter Sundays' by Robert Hayden. Humanities 360. Retrieved from: https://www.humanities360.com/index.php/exploring-those-winter-sundays-by-robert-hayden-4222/
• Morrison, T. (2015). Recitatif and Those Winter Sundays. University of Louisville Writing Center. Retrieved from: https://louisville.edu/writingcenter/writing-assignments/research-paper-assignment/recitatif-and-those-winter-sundays
• Roberts, J. (2017). Exploring Poetry: Those Winter Sundays. Artful Scribe. Retrieved from: https://www.artfulscribe.co.uk/exploring-poetry-those-winter-sundays-robert-hayden

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Robert Hayden described the relationship between his father and younger self in his poem “Those Winter Sundays.” Robert Hayden grew up in a poor neighborhood in Detroit, Michigan. Since his parents left him with family friends, [...]

When one boards the train of parenthood, there is no getting off. The journey through parenthood can be frightening as selfless and sacrificial love has to be rendered; and it is only when a child matures, and gains experience [...]

When one considers the criticism of Beowulf, from the beginnings to more recent writings the early lack of interest in Grendel’s mother is very apparent. In 1936 J. R. R. Tolkien dismissed her as a secondary figure to her son. [...]

The epic poem Beowulf highlights the role of God as a guiding protector who provides earthly wealth and well-being to the people of 6th century Denmark and Sweden. Beowulf and his people worship a pagan god who serves to [...]

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Robert Hayden

Those winter sundays.

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Lord’s lost Him His mockingbird, His fancy warbler; Satan sweet-talked her, four bullets hushed her. Who would have thought

Today as the news from Selma and… poisons the air like fallout, I come again to see the serene, great picture that I l… Here space and time exist in light

When it is finally ours, this free… and terrible thing, needful to man… usable as earth; when it belongs a… when it is truly instinct, brain m… reflex action; when it is finally…

He dines alone surrounded by refle… of himself. Then after sleep and b… descends the Cinquecento stair his… wrought from hypochondria of the w… to-do and nagging deathwish of the…

Then fled, O brethren, the wicked… and wandered wandered far from curfew joys in the Dismal’s n… Fool of St. Elmo’s fire In scary night I wandered, prayin…

Jesús, Estrella, Esperanza, Merc… Sails flashing to the wind like we… sharks following the moans the fev… horror the corposant and compass r… Middle Passage:

The old woman across the way is whipping the boy again and shouting to the neighborhood her goodness and his wrongs. Wildly he crashes through elephant…

Her sleeping head with its great g… of serpents torpidly astir burned into the mirroring shield— a scathing image dire as hated truth the mind accepts at…

The icy evil that struck his fathe… and ravished his mother into madne… trapped him in violence of a punis… struggling to break free. As Home Boy, as Dee-troit Red,

Steel doors—guillotine gates— of the doorless house closed massi… We were locked in with loss. Guards frisked us, marked our wris… then let us into the crab Rec Hal…

No longer throne of a goddess to w… no longer the bubble house of chil… tumbling Mother Goose man, The emphatic moon ascends— the brilliant challenger of rocket…

Runs falls rises stumbles on from… and the darkness thicketed with sh… and the hunters pursuing and the h… and the night cold and the night l… to cross and the jack-muh-lanterns…

Drifting night in the Georgia pin… coonskin drum and jubilee banjo. Pretty Malinda, dance with me. Night is juba, night is congo. Pretty Malinda, dance with me...

Naked, he lies in the blinded room chainsmoking, cradled by drugs, by… as never by any lover’s cradling f… Miles Davis coolly blows for him: O pena negra, sensual Flamenco bl…

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