Poem Explication: “Those Winter Sundays”
At the beginning of the poem “Those
Winter Sundays” by Robert Hayden, the
speaker introduces cold and uncomfortable
images to relay the tone of the poem: Regret
for not respecting his father. Hayden uses
“blueback cold” in the second line,
presenting a tone of sadness and loneliness
throughout the house that the speaker and
his family like in. The word “blueblack” is
such an uncommon word that it carries an
extremely negative feeling, exemplifying the
cold feeling of distance throughout the
family. This developing tone of regret and
distance is also created through the
speaker’ representation of his father with
“cracked hands that ached,” which indicates
the father’s struggle with the harsh
coldness. The “stirring of banked fires”
within the house, even on “Sunday morning
too” shows the father’s commitment to better
his relationship with his family. Although
the father tries, his family does not notice
the struggle he made, shown in line four
when “No one ever thanked him.” The past
tense of the poem shows that a regretful
realization of ingratitude toward the father
has dawned on the speaker, who now realizes
through the memories of his father that the
man’s actions were warm and appreciative.
The speaker now realizes that his father had
“driven out the cold” (cold being both
literal and figurative), and by doing to,
tried to warm the family and keep family
relationships from freezing over. Hayden’s
repeated useage of cold and bitterness,
ending with his father’s success, represents
the speaker’s memories of a touch past. It
also shows his regret of never thanking his
father for taming the uncomfortable
elements. The repeated “What did I know,
what did I know” emphasizes how much he now
understands about the importance of his
father’s small sacrifices compared to his
knowledge as a boy.
Poem Explication: “Blackberry Picking”
Seamus Heaney uses elements like tone,
imagery, and structure to convey the loss of
innocence in his poem “Blackberry Picking.”
The tone suggests the dark side to the
blackberry season and the picking of them.
While the poem starts off with childish
anticipation of the long wait until the
berries were ripe, it then introduces dark
words to describe the blackberries, such as
“summer’s blood was in it” and “our palms as
sticky as Bluebeard’s” create a suspenseful
atmosphere. His inclusion of the reference
to the sticky hands of Bluebeard (who killed
his wives in a fairy tale) creates morbid
imagery of blood and hints at the
disappointment to come in the following
stanza. The second stanza shows the loss of
innocence for the speaker and his friends,
who can finally see the dark underlying
theme just as they spot the “rat-grey
fungus, glutting on our cache.” All of
their hard efforts are “stinking” along with
the fruit, which is “fermented”, “turn[ed]
sour.” This has been a reoccurring event in
their lives that leaves their childish
optimism dashed: “Each year I hoped they’d
keep, knew they could not.” By ending with
the couplet and the negative-sounding
rhyming pair “rot” and “not,” the poem is
ended with an ongoing internal struggle
inside the young pickers to deal with adult
disappointments of life.
Poem Explication: “The Summer When I Was
Sixteen”
“The Summer When I Was Sixteen” written
by Geraldine Connolly describes a summer day
in the lives of a group of sixteen-year-old
girls, told from a first person point of
view. The title sets up the fact that this
poem is told from the point of view of an
older woman reflecting on the good times in
her youth. The tone is light and carefree,
showing her nostalgia for this time, and her
desire to return to such an uncomplicated
world. Words such as “paraded” and “danced”
show the untroubled feeling the character
holds. The author seems not to be worried
with the world around her; she and her
friends “[do] not exist beyond the gaze of a
boy.” It is their only thing to live for at
the moment.
It is not until the last line of the poem
that the girl seems uneasy about her future.
As she “tosse[d] a glance through the chain
link at an improbable world,” she is
thinking about how she would never enter
into a life of worries and stress (the world
defined by the harshness of “chain link”
instead of the softness “chenille blankets,”
the sweetness of “cotton candy torches,” and
the beauty of “turquoise pool[s]”). At this
time in her life, she did not concern
herself with the outside world. The poem
conveys longing for that time again, and
irony because what she saw is what she
became. The structure of the broken
sentences within stanzas is an attempt for
the speaker to return to her life of no
structure or no pressure to become a mature
adult. The poem is almost a dream or a wish
that the speaker can only convey by drawing
from her romanticized past.