Blog #6: Reflecting Upon, "Those Winter Sundays" by Robert Hayden

Those Winter Sundays, seems to be a poem of sadness of the narrator, and the anger that flows through their home. Hayden presented readers with a time frame, only to the extent of a day in the week. But while reading the poem, I was able to imagine their father, with his dry and callused hands, getting dressed in the chill of morning. With such limited detail I can imagine, maybe, what his work place looks like. It is not a happy place, and as mentioned, it is not a profession that receives much praise from the people that benefit from the results of the job. The narrator comes off to me as young, and afraid. They are afraid of the tensions of the house, probably between the parents, maybe due to long work hours, difficulty making payments etc., but that's way too much for all of this. 

Once you get to the final piece of the poem, you can tell it is lovers quarrels. "Speaking indifferently to him," I think here is where the wife comes in strongly. She and her husband are having an argument, and the narrator, their child, isn't quite understanding it. The child sees their father as a good man, a caring man. He cleans their shoes, and warms their homes as well as others homes, he is a good man, why would he be getting in trouble? But this was all in the past, each Sunday. Since the narrator was young, they felt they knew nothing of love's difficulties, and the lonely moments that came with marriage.