Intro to Poetry--''Those Winter Sundays''.pptx -...

If you have not met with me for your
conference, your research paper is in
great danger because it requires weeks
of advance planning. See me after class
to set a time.
Our second conference will happen
when you have your first draft (in three
weeks). I will send/post the link to set an
appointment soon.
CONFERENCE #1 (MANDATORY)

Those Winter
Sundays
Robert
Hayden

Robert Hayden
(1913-1980) (p.
212)
•
Born August 4, 1913, as Asa Bundy
Sheffey in Detroit, Michigan, and
taken into a foster family
•
Raised in a slum called Paradise
Valley (Detroit’s ghetto)
•
Attended Detroit City College
•
Married Erma Morris in 1940
•
Known for poems that express the
African-American experience
•
In 1976, appointed consultant to
the Library of Congress, becoming
the first African-American poet to
receive this honor
•
In 1980, died of heart failure

“Those Winter Sundays”
(p.
213)
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

The Speaker
•
The son/daughter of the father
•
Probably is his son
(“ and polished my good shoes as
well”)
•
He is an adult now, looking back onto what
his father had done for him in the past
•
He realizes now how he wasted his
childhood not recognizing the little things
that his father did

The Attitude of the
Speaker Toward his Father
A Subtle Love – building fires in the
early morning that “drove out the cold”
Fear – (“
fearing the chronic angers of that house”) –
implies that his family fought a lot
Regret – the boy didn’t understand the
significance his father had until later in
his life