Imagery In Those Winter Sundays

Poetry is a collection of words that tell stories, paint pictures and stir up emotions. Poems can be interpreted differently by each reader. Some find a particular poem to have a specific meaning, while another could find a completely opposite meaning. Poems often use imagery and simile or metaphors to illustrate an idea, thought or emotion. In this paper we will look at three poems that have a similar topic: fathers.
The first poem is titled “Those Winter Sundays” by Robert Hayden. This poem is about a father who is a working man. The poem starts off illustrating the father’s dedication to the family by waking up early to make a fire to warm the home. He dresses in the cold dark of morning and the line ends with the statement “No one ever thanked him” (Hayden, n.d.). The mood starts off somber. The father’s pain is felt through the powerful imagery of the line "cracked hands that ached" (Hayden, n.d.). Hayden uses a metaphor when he calls the
The mood of this poem is fun and jubilant, a snapshot of a child’s memory. The father in this poem dances with his son swinging him around to his mother’s disdain as is illustrated in the line “We romped until the pans Slid from the kitchen shelf; My mother’s countenance Could not unfrown itself” (Roethke, n.d.). The waltz is a metaphor for not only the dance but the relationship between a father and son. The imagery of a small boy who is perhaps up too late and his father perhaps has had too much to drink is illustrated by the line “The whiskey on your breath Could make a small boy dizzy” (Roethke, n.d.). But the father waltzes the small boy to bed while he clings to his shirt. The boy is scraped by buckles and notes his father’s rough knuckles but enjoys the attention. The buckle is perhaps a metaphor for the rougher parts of the relationship. This small snapshot is one which illustrates that it is often the small moments that are remembered later in