"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?
from COLLECTED POEMS OF ROBERT HAYDEN, 1985
Robert Hayden chooses one moment of childhood to analyze the complex relationship he
had with his adopted parents (see Lesson #2 - "Locked in with Loss ... the Poetry of
Robert Hayden"). This widely anthologized sonnet is written in very clear, almost literal
language until its beautifully mystifying abstract closing couplet. Hayden plainly tells us
what the poem is about in the last line of stanza 1. The simpleness of this line is offset by
"What did I know, what did I know of love's austere and lonely offices?" Your students
should be able to understand the "story" of the poem, but they may need help
understanding the depth of emotion that the poet conveys.
The word "office" is a surprising one, yet it works on many levels. Among its meanings
are:
1. something performed or intended to be performed for another
2. a function or duty assigned as part of one's work or position
3. a position of authority or trust
4. the building or rooms where business is carried out
Office is also the name for the daily obligatory prayers said by a Catholic priest. It is a
daily responsibility for him in order to earn the appellation "Father." I am sure Hayden
had all these meanings in mind when he wrote the poem.
"My Papa's Waltz"
by Theodore Roethke
The whiskey on your breath
Could make a small boy dizzy;
But I hung on like death:
Such waltzing is not easy.
We romped until the pans
Slid from the kitchen shelf;
My mother's countenance
Could not unfrown itself.
The hand that held my wrist
Was battered on one knuckle;
At every step you missed
My right ear scraped a buckle.
You beat time on my head
With a palm caked hard by dirt,
Then waltzed me off to bed
Still clinging to your shirt.
from THE COLLECTED POEMS OF THEODORE ROETHKE, 1966
Roethke's simple poem is unsettling because of the tension set up between the lovely
music of the poem and the difficult, perhaps disturbing scene which it describes. Of
course, the waltz of the title is ironic, as the dance the father and his son are doing is
more a drunken stumble that symbolically and physically disturbs the house and its
residents.
While some readers at first think that the father is assaulting his son, he is actually
"roughhousing" with him, holding him close as he stumbles around the kitchen, probably
perched atop his own feet ("At every step you missed / My right ear scraped a buckle") in
his intoxicated dance. The mother, looking on, is furious. Is she angry because this
happens every night when the old man finally comes home after stopping off at the local
bar for a few drinks? Or is she angry because he doesn't come home most nights, but
when he does, he disrupts the kind of normalcy that she has been trying hard to create?
And what do we know of "Papa"? Like Hayden's father, he works with his hands, but his
are "battered on one knuckle." And what does the young boy feel as he holds on "like
death" to his father who beats "time on [his] head"? Isn't this really what all parents pass
on to their children?
"Flash Cards"
by Rita Dove
In math I was the whiz kid, keeper
of oranges and apples. What you don't understand,
master, my father said; the faster
I answered, the faster they came.
I could see one bud on the teacher's geranium,
one clear bee sputtering at the wet pane.
The tulip tree always dragged after heavy rain
so I tucked my head as my boots slapped home.
My father put up his feet after work
and relaxed with a highball and The Life of Lincoln.
After supper we drilled and I climbed the dark
before sleep, before a thin voice hissed
numbers as I spun on a wheel. I had to guess.
Ten, I kept saying, I'm only ten.
from GRACE NOTES, 1989
Like the other poets in this selection, Rita Dove chooses a moment from her childhood
which conveys more about the relationship than just a particular incident. She says in an
interview with Bill Moyers (THE LANGUAGE OF LIFE: A FESTIVAL OF POETS.
Bill Moyers, James Haba, ed., Doubleday, 1995): "There was stress there for me mainly
because flash cards never end, but I didn't realize that [my parents] were preparing me for
life, where things don't end either." This experience, like most in life, is bittersweet.
Notice the second stanza which is not set in the living room, but out of the house. The
young child is curious, a student of life, and her "inner poet" is studying the sounds and
images of the world as it sputters, drags, and slaps about. The last line is surprisingly
ambiguous as "Ten" works both as an answer to the flash card, and as a way of protesting
the pressure her father puts on her.
In that same interview, Dove tells Moyers that "Flash Cards" is "my daughter's favorite
poem because I made her do flash cards, too, and I had sworn I would never do that to a
child."
"The Portrait"
by Stanley Kunitz
My mother never forgave my father
for killing himself,
especially at such an awkward time
and in a public park,
that spring
when I was waiting to be born.
She locked his name
in her deepest cabinet
and would not let him out,
though I could hear him thumping.
When I came down from the attic
with the pastel portrait in my hand
of a long-lipped stranger
with a brave moustache
and deep brown level eyes,
she ripped it into shreds
without a single word
and slapped me hard.
In my sixty-fourth year
I can feel my cheek
still burning.
from THE POEMS OF STANLEY KUNITZ, 1928-1978
"The Portrait" might be read as a snapshot of three separate people, the father, son, and
mother, each of whom is troubled and flawed. Kunitz, in an interview with Bill Moyers,
says "[His mother's] anger was directed at him, not at me. She wanted to expunge his
memory. No mention of him ever crossed her lips." The young boy, pleased with his
unearthing of the "long-lipped stranger with a brave moustache," learns that discovery
creates risk. The poet feels his cheeks still burning, even after most of a century has
passed. This is the kind of accomplishment to which William Carlos Williams alludes.
"When You Forget to Feed Your Gerbil" by Denise Duhamel
the mother eats her newborn babies.
Pink furless heads without traces of blood
lie on the newspaper with droppings and wood chips.
Mother-gerbil sucks at a cloudy dry water-bottle
that you also forgot to fill as though she is dragging on a cigarette.
When you finally notice, you finally provide
with the terror and guilt of a prisoner's guard,
imagining the sound of tin cups like mad scales against her bars.
Your gerbil doesn't try to scramble away when you open the metal door,
toss in pellets and an old leaf of lettuce.
And after she eats, she seems almost happy on her exercise wheel,
the one she's gnawed a little plastic off of. You can't bring yourself
to clean her cage, tip out the babies' remains. You can't bring yourself
to do your homework. It's always your fault
when you're a child taking care of a mother.
from GIRL SOLDIER, 1996
Duhamel takes a surprising turn in the last line when the true subject of her poem is
revealed. She painfully recounts the details of the cage with the remains of its tiny
casualties. The ambience is guilt, especially as she compares herself to a prison guard.
What shakes things up is the suggestion that she has neglected the gerbil because she is
taking care of her own mother. You can almost hear her mother screaming at her, "You
lazy, irresponsible little girl. Look what you've done!" What isn't said, only suggested, is
what the mother has been doing, and why the mother couldn't take care of herself.