Both Robert Hayden’s poem “Those Winter Sundays” and Wallace Stevens’ poem “The Plain Sense of Things” describe different aspects of what defines house and home. Although a home can be a house, a house does not always mean a home. This difference, among other factors, correlates with how both poets play on the emotional undertones between a house full of people and a lone house in the woods. While Hayden seeks to describe how one’s house is a home because of a father’s love-filled action, Stevens delineates a house’s transformation from a home for people to a home for the natural world. Although the poets use two different tones for their respective poems, both define what a home could stand for.
“Those Winter Sundays” depicts the speaker’s childhood memory of Sunday church mornings. The speaker explains that his father, despite having to work outside the rest of the week to provide for his family, would go outside early mornings to retrieve firewood to heat the home. Only when the heat from the fire would warm the whole house and he polished his son’s church shoes, would the speaker’s father wake the family from their slumber. No one showed their appreciation for this action that displayed the father’s love for his family. The speaker shows deep self-reproach from his indifference toward his father, which he concludes was from being young and naïve.
In line 5 (“No one ever thanked him”) and in line 10 (“Speaking indifferently to him”) the speaker explicitly states that during those times he did not particularly care whether or not his father took the time to warm the house, polish his good shoes and then wake him up for church. At the time the speaker may have been fearful of his parents fighting, confrontation or yelling tha...
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Both “These Winter Sundays” and “The Plain Sense of Things” set out to describe what the speaker feels a home is, whether it’s where one’s family is or where life resides in. Either poem takes intricate detail using the seasons to help reflect the underlying emotions of the poem’s voice along with standout lines that help the reader know what the speaker aims to say, why they say it and how they choose to say it. Hayden and Stevens do a nice job of conveying a certain sense without having to be boldly explicit.
Works Cited
Hayden, Robert. “These Winter Sundays”. Poems, Poets, Poetry: An Introduction and Anthology. Ed. Karen S. Henry. Boston: Bedford/St. Martins, 2010. 6. Print.
Stevens, Wallace. “The Plain Sense of Things”. Poems, Poets, Poetry: An Introduction and Anthology. Ed. Karen S. Henry. Boston: Bedford/St. Martins, 2010. 8. Print.
“Those Winter Sundays” by Robert Hayden, “My Father as a Guitar” by Martin Espada, and “Digging” by Seamus Heaney are three poems that look into the past of the authors and dig up memories of the authors fathers. The poems contain similar conflicts, settings, and themes that are essential in helping the reader understand the heartfelt feelings the authors have for their fathers. With the authors of the three poems all living the gust of their life in the 1900’s, their biographical will be similar and easier to connect with each other.
The events of our childhood and interactions with our parents is an outline of our views as parents ourselves. Although Robert Hayden’s relationship with his father differentiates from the relationship of Theodore Roethke and his father, they are both pondering back to their childhood and expressing the events in a poem. “My Papa’s Waltz” and “Those winter Sundays” provide the reader with an image of a childhood event which states how fathers are being viewed by their children. These poems reflect upon the relationship of the father and child when the child was a youth. Both Roethke and Hayden both indicate that their fathers weren’t perfect although they look back admiringly at their fathers’ actions. To most individuals, a father is a man that spends time with and takes care of them which gains him love and respect. An episode of Roethke’s childhood is illustrated in “My Papa’s Waltz”. In “My Papa’s Waltz”, the father comes home showing signs of alcohol and then begins waltzing with his son. Roethke states that the father’s hands are “battered on one knuckle”. The mother was so upset about the dancing that she did nothing other than frown. At the end of the day, the father waltzed the son to bed. “Those Winter Sundays” is based on a regular Sunday morning. The father rises early to wake his family and warm the house. To warm the house, he goes out in the cold and splits wood to start a fire. This is a poem about an older boy looking back to his childhood and regretting that “No one ever thanked him.” In Those Winter Sundays'; by Robert Hayden, the poet also relinquishes on a regular occurrence in his childhood. On Sunday mornings, just as any other morning, his father rises early and puts on his clothes in the cold darkness. He ...
Everett, Nicholas From The Oxford Companion to Twentieth-century Poetry in English. Ed. Ian Hamiltong. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994. Copyright 1994 by Oxford University Press.
"Those Winter Sundays" by Robert Hayden is a poem about a how the author is recalling how his father would wake up early on Sundays, a day which is usually a reserved as a day of rest by many, to fix a fire for his family. The mood of this poem is a bit sad. It portrays a father, who deeply cares for his family but doesn't seem to show it by emotions, words, or touching. It also describes a home that isn't very warm in feelings as well as the title" Those Winter Sundays" The author describes the father as being a hard worker, in the line "…with cracked hands that ached from labor in the weekday…", but still even on Sundays--the day of rest, the father works at home to make sure the house is warm for his family. The "blueblack cold described in the poem is now warmed by a father's love. This poem describes the author reminiscing what did not seem obvious at the time, the great love of his father, and the author's regretting to thank his father for all that he did.
Meinke, Peter. “Untitled” Poetry: An Introduction. Ed. Michael Meyer. 6th ed. Boston: Bedford/ St. Martin’s 2010. 89. Print
Robert Hayden poem ”Those Winter Sundays” explores his father as an unsung hero and it also presents an acknowledgement of poets lack of gratitude for his father. The speaker reflects on the childhood memories of his father and goes on to find all kinds of disabilities he had in terms of realization regarding the pain father bared for the poet. Story is very emotional in the way that the speaker reveals sacrifices of his father during his childhood throughout the poem. It is agonizing and the words used in the poem are really an expression of desperation and sadness as he is really missing that time. There are a number of sacrifices made by the father during the harsh winter season of writer’s childhood. In his childhood he was not actually aware about the harshness of those lovely and affectionate feelings that his father had about him. In the poem ”Those Winter Sundays” Robert Hayden uses imagery and sound devices to portray his father as an unsung hero and to acknowledge his own lack of gratitude
The poem “Those Winter Sundays” displays a past relationship between a child and his father. Hayden makes use of past tense phrases such as “I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking” (6) to show the readers that the child is remembering certain events that took place in the past. Although the child’s father did not openly express his love towards him when he was growing up, the child now feels a great amount of guilt for never thanking his father for all the things he actually did for him and his family. This poem proves that love can come in more than one form, and it is not always a completely obvious act.
Johnson, Jeannine. "An overview of “Those Winter Sundays”." Poetry for Students. Detroit: Gale. Literature Resource Center. Web. 5 Dec. 2013.
Poems, Poets, Poetry: An Introduction and Anthology. 3rd ed. Ed. Helen Vendler. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s,
The speaker in “Disillusionment of Ten O’ Clock” (Stevens) places the readers in a position that is crucial to the way that he wants them to perceive of the environment. The poem is written in free verse, a decision made by Stevens to invite his readers to come away from rules; not even writing should be controlled by what thy neighbor thinks.
The central conflict in Robert Hayden’s poem “Those Winter Sundays”, is the unfortunate realization that the speaker never truly thanked or appreciated his father’s sacrifices when he was a child. After growing up, taking on responsibilities, and achieving a rehabilitated understanding of the world through experience, Hayden expresses his ingratitude that often accompanies with youth. The first line of the first stanza writes, “Sundays too my father got up early/and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold” (Hayden, 17). Out of these two lines, the word “too” is filled with importance because Sunday’s are dedicated to either religious practices, or rest for a working man. Fortunately, this was not his father’s case as his father would wake up early in order to perform his loving and self-sacrificing duties.
In Robert Hayden’s poem “Those Winter Sundays” show that children have a hard time understanding why a parent is distant the speaker says “Sundays too my father got up early and put his clothes on/ in the blueblack cold,”(Line 1-2) the father even gets up very early on Sundays as in the “blueblack cold” the speaker seems to not understand why the father does this why does he get up so early day after day? He seems to ask himself. The speaker observes that “ …With cracked hands the ached from labor in the weekday weather/ banked fires blazed”(Line 3-5) the father works hard for his family his hands are cracked and sore and he still gets up earlier then the rest of his family and makes the fire blaze to warm the house for them.
Strand, Mark and Evan Boland. The Making of a Poem: A Norton Anthology of Poetic Forms. New
Stevens, Wallace. "Sunday Morning." The Columbia Anthology of American Poetry. Editor: Jay Parini. Columbia University Press, 1995. 330-331.
“The Snow Man,” by Wallace Stevens, dramatizes a metaphorical “mind of winter”, and introduces the idea that one must have a certain mindset in order to correctly perceive reality. The poet, or rather the Snow Man, is an interpreter of simple and ordinary things; “A cold wind, without interpretation, has no misery” (Poetry Genius). Through the use of imageries and metaphors relating to both wintery landscapes and the Snow Man itself, Stevens illustrates different ideas of human objectivity and the abstract concept of true nothingness. Looking through the eyes of the Snow Man, the readers are given an opportunity to perceive a reality that is free from objectivity; The Snow Man makes it clear that winter can possess qualities of beauty and also emptiness: both “natural wonder, and human misery”. He implies that winter can also be nothing at all: “just a bunch of solid water, dormant plants, and moving air.” (The Wondering Minstrels). “One must