Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
In analyzing poetry there has to be a connection between the author and the reader, in order to understand what the author is trying to express through his/her work. The reader’s needs to be able to read between the lines. Tone and mood help the reader identify what the poem is trying to convey. To do this we need to figure out who the speaker is, and the relationship the speaker has with his/her family. We will be depicting “Those Winter Sundays,” “Digging,” “Dusting,” and “My Grandmother Would Rock quietly and hum” searching for these qualities.
In “Those Winter Sundays” the speaker is an adult male recalling of his past, his childhood, and his relationship with his father. Throughout the poem there relationship is carried out as cold and
…show more content…
The speaker is proud of his family, but does not feel that writing is as important to what his father did, digging. He writes, “By God the old man could handle a spade / Just like his old man/ my grandfather cut more turf in a day/ Than any other man on Toner’s bog.”(15-18), this shows how his old man, his father was just as well as his grandfather who he spoke very highly of, where no man could do more than him, he was proud. But he puts himself down, to not be as good as his father, when he says “But I’ve no spade to follow men like them” (28), as though he cannot live up to them because he is a …show more content…
But as the poems continues we notice a problem with her memory, they were very much in love how although her memory was failing her that she still remembered her love with her husband. The speaker states “Not Michael” and “Wavery memory” (17/21), without certainty and the reason she is not sure. And the last stanza of the poem it states “That was years before/ Father gave her up/ with her name grew to mean/ Promise, then/ Desert-in-Peace”(29-34) to show their love story, where her father gave her up is when she got married , and her name grew to mean promise, to show the promise they made in getting married, and Desert-in Peace where she now is lonely without her husband but in peace because the life they lived.
Finally, “My grandmother would rock quietly and hum” the speaker is a young Mexican girl who is remembering her grandmother. They relationship seemed as any normal relationship of a grandmother to a grandchild. Throughout the poem it becomes notable that her grandmother died and the author is remembering her when she was alive. This is proven at the end of the poem where she states “to the old house/ worn spots by the stove/ echo of her shuffling/ and/ Mexico/ still hang in her fading calendar pictures” (47-54) as a walk through memory lane for the
“Those Winter Sundays” by Robert Hayden, “My Father as a Guitar” by Martin Espada, and “Digging” by Seamus Heaney are three poems that look into the past of the authors and dig up memories of the authors fathers. The poems contain similar conflicts, settings, and themes that are essential in helping the reader understand the heartfelt feelings the authors have for their fathers. With the authors of the three poems all living the gust of their life in the 1900’s, their biographical will be similar and easier to connect with each other.
The main theme of Snowbound is that no-matter what happens, family will be there to help and comfort. This theme is demonstrated widely throughout the poem and even more so in the last stanza of this excerpt. Another, less prominent, theme of Snowbound is the meaning and involvement of God in the lives of people.
“Those Winter Sundays” had a sad and sorrowful tone to it as compared with “Begotten” which has a more pleasant and upbeat tone. One of the reasons why I chose to look at poems in the family album was because of how diverse every poem was going to be. Just like in real life, everyone has a different life story due to their families. Family life is an important part of life and I liked how the speaker of the poem was able to reflect back on his childhood after had grown up. Both of these poems were about child-father relationship, but family all together. It is easy to take your parents for granite, but when you grow up you start to realize how grateful you are for all they have done for you. Just because these two poems had two different tones did not make one better than the other, they were both equally powerful in their
"Those Winter Sundays" by Robert Hayden is a poem about a how the author is recalling how his father would wake up early on Sundays, a day which is usually a reserved as a day of rest by many, to fix a fire for his family. The mood of this poem is a bit sad. It portrays a father, who deeply cares for his family but doesn't seem to show it by emotions, words, or touching. It also describes a home that isn't very warm in feelings as well as the title" Those Winter Sundays" The author describes the father as being a hard worker, in the line "…with cracked hands that ached from labor in the weekday…", but still even on Sundays--the day of rest, the father works at home to make sure the house is warm for his family. The "blueblack cold described in the poem is now warmed by a father's love. This poem describes the author reminiscing what did not seem obvious at the time, the great love of his father, and the author's regretting to thank his father for all that he did.
The poem states not clearly, but profoundly that all this pair needs is each other, and that this trip or journey to give a little old lady some much needed food and money is more of a joyous occasion simply because of the company of each other. This memory, this recollection, though it includes the mother, is not about her, it is about the pair travelling together and using the time to enjoy the little things in life; a ride on a ferry, time spent laying together on a moonlit hillside, watching the sun rise after a long night of travelling. Whatever it is truly about, the one thing most important to the author is the memory itself.
Family bonds are very important which can determine the ability for a family to get along. They can be between a mother and son, a father and son, or even a whole entire family itself. To some people anything can happen between them and their family relationship and they will get over it, but to others they may hold resentment. Throughout the poems Those Winter Sundays, My Papa’s Waltz, and The Ballad of Birmingham family bonds are tested greatly. In Those Winter Sundays the relationship being shown is between the father and son, with the way the son treats his father. My Papa’s Waltz shows the relationship between a father and son as well, but the son is being beaten by his father. In The Ballad of Birmingham the relationship shown is between
...nal family. The second poem uses harsh details described in similes, metaphors, and personification. The message of a horribly bad childhood is clearly defined by the speaker in this poem. Finally, the recollection of events, as described by the two speakers, is distinguished by the psychological aspect of how these two children grew up. Because the first child grew up in a passive home where everything was hush-hush, the speaker described his childhood in that manner; trying to make it sound better than what it actually was. The young girl was very forward in describing her deprivation of a real family and did not beat around the bush with her words. It is my conclusion that the elements of tone, imagery, and the recollection of events are relevant to how the reader interprets the message conveyed in a poem which greatly depends on how each element is exposed.
The poem “Those Winter Sundays” displays a past relationship between a child and his father. Hayden makes use of past tense phrases such as “I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking” (6) to show the readers that the child is remembering certain events that took place in the past. Although the child’s father did not openly express his love towards him when he was growing up, the child now feels a great amount of guilt for never thanking his father for all the things he actually did for him and his family. This poem proves that love can come in more than one form, and it is not always a completely obvious act.
Red Snow In the poem, “Snow,” by David Berman, is about an older brother and a younger brother. The younger asks about some snow angles in the ground and the older brother gives him a reasonable explanation for why they are there. The symbols in the poem make the poem have its meaning and the tone created is dark but also light.
Many writers use powerful words to portray powerful messages. Whether a writer’s choice of diction is cheerful, bitter, or in Robert Hayden’s case in his poem “Those Winter Sundays,” dismal and painful, it is the diction that formulates the tone of the piece. It is the diction which Hayden so properly places that allows us to read the poem and picture the cold tension of his foster home, and envision the barren home where his poem’s inspiration comes from. Hayden’s tumultuous childhood, along with the unorthodox relationships with his biological parents and foster parents help him to create the strong diction that permeates the dismal tone of “Those Winter Sundays.” Hayden’s ability to both overcome his tribulations and generate enough courage
Poetry often allows readers to identify complex issues through the underlying idea or theme. Robert Hayden, Sylvia Plath, and Shakespeare vividly express their perspectives through the theme of love, providing readers with various outlooks into their individual perceptions of love. For instance, Hayden conveys his conflicting feelings of love towards his foster father. As a young child Hayden perceived his father as cold and grim. However, as an adult he becomes fully aware of the sacrifices his father made for him as a child in the name of love. Similarly, Plath professes her unresolved feelings about her daddy’s domineering love. Frequently, Plath identifies herself as a victim of his venomous affection, one in which she can not escape through
The poem creates an image in the mind to express her feelings. The poem also brings a sad dark tone by not remembering her past lovers and accepted towards the end that she will no longer be happy. I believe Edna St. Vincent Millay made a remarkable poem that I feel some sort of connection. Not only for women out there to express their sexuality but as for an emotional connection for all of us getting older and yet we hold nothing but emotional memories we once had at one point. Everyone had lovers whom we forgot after years of growth but we still hold onto that young feeling of past
In the analysis of poetry one is always looking for the universal truth and how it relates to life. In the case of a child losing a parent, it strengthens the concept of the child’s own mortality. When your father’s generation gradually disappears it reminds you that your generation is the next in line.
...a silence deep and white” (Line,4) they are talking about how the white snow is beautiful and, how it looks like to me this is a love of nature to some maybe not.Last one is Intuition over fact in this quote “Father,who makes the snow?” (Line,22) says his daughter, “And told of the good All father” (Line,23) and lastly “Who cares for us here below” (Line,24) he is talking about and all father which i believe he is talking about god,and this is a great characteristic for this poem.
Sigmund Freud, founder of psychoanalysis, said, “We are never so vulnerable as when we love” (Marie, Michaela). Since parents and their children have a special connection, each one different from another, sometimes parents can be harsh and too protective, hurting the ones they love so much. While all three poems explore the theme of “Relationship”, relationships in “Those Winter Sundays”, differ from “Daddy”, and “Still I rise”. In “Those Winter Sundays”, the connection between protagonist and his father, occurs only when he has grown up. Towards the end of the poem reader sees how the protagonist starts to appreciate the actions of his father, because as a child he couldn’t understand the difficulty of “love’s austere and lonely offices?”