Winter Sundays
Essays

Back then, life was thick with all the things I didn't have:

Memory Meets Maturity in "My Papa's Waltz" and "Those Winter Sundays"

The narrator of Robert Hayden's "Those Winter Sundays" reflects on his father's inability to express love. As a child the speaker misinterpreted his father's sternness and austerity as indifference.

¶ … shifts in diction, Li-Young Lee changes the tone of "Persimmons" dramatically. The first few stanzas are about young love and passionate sexuality, accompanied by words like "sweet" and "tenderly." By the fourth…

Sundays too..." means he did it everyday, not just on Sunday. Sunday was his day off work but not from putting the fire on. I noticed "blueblack" next. It was terribly cold.

Is the poem lyric, narrative, or dramatic? How do you know?

¶ … Robert Hayden is set at a time during the cold climates. However, despite the time frame in which the poem was set, the poem is still applicable to situations not properly set in the cold days of living.

¶ … Ex-Basketball Player" by John Updike analyzes a former high-school basketball's life after he has graduated and introduced to the "real world." "Ex-Basketball Player" allows the reader to empathize with Flick Webb,…

¶ … Simon J. Ortiz's "My Father's Song" and Robert Hayden's "Those Winter Sundays" are poetic tributes to fathers. In both poems, the speakers remember and even eulogize their fathers.