Analyzing Robert Hayden's "Those Winter Sundays": A Lyric Poem

Introduction: Classifying the Poem's Form

One of the most intensely personal subjects for any human being — whether a poet or not — is his or her relationship with their parents. "Those Winter Sundays" by Robert Hayden is a quiet yet forceful lyric poem that depicts the speaker's father during his characteristic Sunday winter morning routine. Unlike a narrative poem, this poem is not the story of a specific day that was an unusual deviation from a weekly schedule. And unlike a dramatic monologue, the speaker does not consciously adopt an alternative persona, creating explicit distance between the poet and the speaker. Instead, the narrator reflects upon his father's life in classical lyric form — a personal meditation upon a particular, private subject.

Denotations and Connotations of Key Words

Splintering (n.): A sharp, slender piece — as of wood, bone, glass, or metal — split or broken off from a main body; also, a splinter group. (v.): To split or break into sharp, slender pieces; to form splinters.

Austere: Severe or stern in disposition or appearance; somber and grave (e.g., the austere figure of a Puritan minister). Strict or severe in discipline; ascetic (e.g., a desert nomad's austere life). Having no adornment or ornamentation; bare (e.g., an austere style).

Blueblack: Black and blue, like a bruise. Chronic: An ailment that never really goes away, like arthritis. Splintering: Painful, like a splinter caught in one's finger. Austere: Very removed, haughty. Offices: Religious rituals, like the offices of a Mass — or, alternatively, the mundane routine of working in an office.

Tone and Irony

The overall tone of the poem is mournful, almost like a eulogy — which suggests that the poet's father may be dead, although this is never stated. The poem seems to mourn both the relationship the speaker had with his father and the relationship he never had. Lines such as "No one ever thanked him" — for putting on the fire early on Sunday mornings, even when the father had no "weekday" work demanding he rise — suggest that the speaker wishes he could go back and thank his father for those kind and silent gestures. The final lines are almost a cry of anguish: "What did I know, what did I know / of love's austere and lonely offices?"

The son implies that, now mature, he can appreciate that even people who cannot easily speak of love often show it in other ways — making a fire, polishing a young child's shoes. Yet the "chronic angers of that house" reveal another side of the father's character, one that kept the speaker and his father emotionally apart. Ironically, although the fire had physically driven out the cold of the house, the emotional relationship between the young speaker and his father remains cold throughout the poem.

Works Cited

"Austere." Dictionary.com. http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=austere

Hayden, Robert. "Those Winter Sundays." Backpack Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, and Drama. Edited by X. J. Kennedy and Dana Gioia.

"Splintering." Dictionary.com. http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=splintering