Those Winter Sundays

Those Winter Sundays by Robert Hayden

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

of love's austere and lonely offices?

One thing that I liked about this poem was how descriptive it was. The author uses good imagery in this poem.

I didn't really dislike anything about this poem. The description was great, and it was a good poem overall.

One thing that confused me about this poem was the story being told in this poem. I did not know whether it was talking about slavery, or what it was actually talking about.

The main literary device used in this poem was the use of auditory imagery. Auditory imagery is an image that represents a sound. An example from the poem that describes this is, "I'd wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking."