Arnold Tapia
Writing Workshop
May 10, 2010
Period 7
Poetry Explication: “Those Winter Sundays”
Robert Hayden’s poem puts a lot of emphasis on the relationship that many kids
and parents share. In the first stanza, Robert introduces the conflict by first saying that the
child’s father would get up in on Sunday mornings and do labor for the family. Then the
actual conflict is introduced in the last line when the speaker says ’no one ever thanked
him.” (L. 5) In the second stanza, Robert Hayden sustains the conflict by saying that the
child would wake up fearing the chronic dangers of the house. In the final stanza, the
speaker of the poem ends with a question for the audience to think about.
In the poem, “These Winter Days” by Robert Hayden, he uses different poetic
devices. In this paragraph I will be analyzing the syntax of the poem. In the poem, the
author uses a variation of short and long sentences. An example of a short sentence from
the poem is when the author says “I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.” (l.
6) An example of a long sentence is when he says “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.” (l. 1-5) What I noticed is that in
the shorter lines, the author talks about the child and in the longer lines he talks about the
father. The way that sentence length reflects on the poem is because the child in the poem
doesn’t do anything that relates to work which is why the lines for him are short. For the
father, on the other hand, is talked about in longer sentences which shows all the hard
work that he has done. The writer also users both loose and periodic sentences. An
example of a loose sentence is when he writes “I’d wake and hear the cold splintering,
breaking” (l 6). The only repetition that occurs in the poem is near the end when the
author says “What did I know, what did I know?” (l. 13).The line is basically
emphasizing the guilt the child has for never thanking his father for his hard work. Lastly,
the sentences are mostly exclamatory like the line when he says “Sundays too my father
got up early”(l .1) What does change is in the end when he uses an interrogative line
when he writes “What did I know, what did I know,/ of loves austere and lonely offices?”
(l 13-14). The purpose of ending with an interrogative line is to make the audience think
of their own relationship with their parents.
In “Those Winter Sundays”, The diction is very neutral. The reason why his
diction is neutral is because the words that he uses are words that many people use in
their daily lives. There are a few words such as “chronic” and “austere” that aren’t
necessarily big, but are words that not many people may know. The way that neutral
diction reflects on the poem is because in the poem, the act of children never thanking
parents for the hard work is an everyday thing. The diction is mostly concrete. What this
does is that it creates imagery for the audience to be able to visualize certain things like
the setting and conditions of the poem. Concrete words include blueblack cold, cracked
hands, and banked fires blaze. The diction is cacophonic. Lines like “cracked hands that
ached” (l. 3) shows cacophony. The cacophony in the poen could represent the love that
the father and child have between one another. It could show that the love between them
is hard love and not the typical love someone would expect father and child would have.
The overall connotation of words in the poem is negative. Words such as cold, cracked,
and specifically austere have very negative connotation, which I also think that reflects
on the harsh relationship the child and father share.
“Those Winter Days” contains several uses of figurative language. Robert Hayden
uses personification when he says “Fearing the chronic angers of the house” (l. 9). The
use of personification is used to represent and maybe show that it isn’t only the father
that’s angry but maybe the whole house is. Hayden also uses Alliteration such as
“blueblack” (l. 2) and “banked fires blaze” (l. 5). The poem also contains assonance and
consonance. The line in which Hayden says “Cracked hands that ached” (l. 3) The reason
why this line is there is because its meant to mimic the sound that wood would make
when it is burning.
Overall, the poem by Robert Hayden, doesn’t have that many dramatic changes to
it. There is one that should be mentioned. Most of the poem consists of exclamatory lines,
Subject verb is the pattern. But at the end of the poem, Hayden decides to end with an
exclamatory line that says “What did I know, what did I know of loves austere and lonely
offices?” (l. 13-14) I think that this is an important line because it puts the focus more on
the audience and makes them think about themselves and whether the problem in the
poem happens in their daily lives.