American Romanticism
Student Poetry Presentation 2008

Thursday 16 October: Robert Hayden, "Those Winter Sundays," N 2424

poetry reader / discussion leader: Telishia Mickens

Robert Hayden

1913-1980

Biographical Information

¬Robert Hayden was born in Detroit, Michigan as Asa Bundy Sheffer.

¬Grew up in a poor neighborhood called by its inhabitants, Paradise Valley. 

¬His parents were divorced when he was very young and his mother left him in the care of foster parents (The Haydens).

¬His mother returned to Michigan to live with him and his foster parents until          Hayden’s birth mother and foster mother had conflict with each other.

(“ I lived in the midst of turmoil all the time I didn’t know if I loved or hated.”)

¬Taught at Fisk University from 1946-1968 (Small, predominantly African American institution with a strong liberal arts and science emphasis. Located in Nashville, Tennessee)

¬Published his first book, Heart-Shape in the Dust in 1940

Other poems by Robert Hayden

(http://famouspoetsandpoems.com/poets/robert_hayden/poems)

Those Winter Sundays

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?

Objectives

1a. Romantic Spirit or Ideology

Romance narrative: A desire for anything besides “the here and now” or “reality," the Romantic impulse, quest, or journey involves crossing physical borders or transgressing social or psychological boundaries in order to attain or regain some transcendent goal or dream.
 

2c. Racially divided but historically related "Old and New Canons" of Romantic literature:

African American: from the Slave Narratives of Douglass and Jacobs to the Harlem Renaissance of Hughes, Hurston, and Cullen

Analysis of Poem

This poem by Robert Hayden portrays love and respect in terms of a father/son relationship. The description and images in the poem give you a mental picture and a feeling of being there, in the cold, bitter house.

Questions

1. How does this poem follow Objective 1a concerning Romantic Spirit / Ideology or the Romance Narrative?

2. How does this poem follow Objective 2C? What connections can readers make between African American and Romantic traditions?

3. With respect to either objective, how can we interpret the line, "fearing the chronic angers of that house?"