Those Winter Sundays
By 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.
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,
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?
Robert Hayden, “Those Winter Sundays” from Collected Poems of Robert Hayden, edited by Frederick Glaysher. Copyright ©1966 by Robert Hayden. Reprinted with
the permission of Liveright Publishing Corporation.
Source: Collected Poems of Robert Hayden (Liveright Publishing Corporation, 1985)
Choose one activity in each row to complete.
Respond to this question in a welldeveloped paragraph:
How does Hayden characterize the
relationship between father and son in the
poem? 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.
Respond to this question in a well-developed
paragraph:
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? Find
and compare particular images in the poem that
expose the difference in the speaker’s childhood
and adult understanding of his father.
Respond to this question in a well-developed
paragraph:
“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?
Choose one sound device in the poem and
explain its effect; think about it as if it were
a song. 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?
Note the consonance, strong and regular sounds
of the harsh letter k together with the hard c in
words such as clothes, blueblack cold, cracked,
ached, weekday, banked, thanked. Consider how
the consonant sounds clash and contrast with
gentle sounding words such as father, weather,
too, ever, him. Highlight the different sound
effects with different colored highlighters.
Listen to this author read and discuss the poem:
Kevin Young Reads "Those Winter Sundays" by
Robert Hayden Kevin Young Discusses "Those
Winter Sundays" by Robert Hayden
What does he discuss that surprises you or
makes you think more deeply? Answer the
question in a well-written two sentences that
address the question and support your answer
with evidence from the text.
“Those Winter Sundays” offers several
striking images. Choose one or more and
illustrate the poem yourself in a handdrawn or computer-created animation of a
particularly powerful image. Title your
picture.
“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.
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?