Analyizing Poetry
In "Those Winter Sundays" by Robert Hayden, and in "Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy's Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota" by James Wright, both speakers have a feeling of regret. Both of the authors have the same approaches to making this feeling apparent. In each of these poems, the feeling of regret and disappointment in themselves is portrayed through the use of imagery. In the poem "Those Winter Sundays", the use of imagery is very apparent throughout the poem. In the opening line, "Sundays too my father got up early/ and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold" (lines 1-2). In these lines Hayden first explains the setting, and then explains his fathers duty, or ritual. "Then with cracked hands that ached/ from labor in the weekday weather made/ banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him" (lines 3-5). By using the word cracked, Hayden demonstrates how the speakers father worked hard, and by using "weekday weather" it gives the audiences a feeling that the weather of the week was not very comfortable. When Hayden says "No one ever thanked him", this starts to give the reader the impression that this speaker is regretful, maybe because he never thanked his father. In the next stanza, Hayden uses a lot of imagery to
In both these poems there is the same underlying point that both speakers feel regretful in one way or another. For the speaker in Hayden's poem, he regretted not telling his father thank you, on the other hand, for the speaker in Wright's poem, he regretted not doing anything with his life. The use of imagery greatly gives the audience a better feel for how each speaker related to their environments. Hayden's use of imagery mostly implied that the setting was cold, and brutal, and that his father getting up every Sunday morning was unbearable, while Wright's use of it, gave the audience the feeling that everything the speaker saw was doing something, but he was doing nothing. Speaking indifferently to him, In this stanza, Hayden describes how the speaker really feels towards his father. The readers can see the regret and disappointment when he said he spoke indifferently to his father, who had done so many things for him. The speaker realizes these sacrifices his dad had made for him, but he goes on to say "What did I know, what did I know?" (line 13), showing the audience that at the time, the speaker did not think of what his father had done for him. and polished my good shoes as well. of love's auste
Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 852
Approximate Pages = 3 (250 words per page double spaced)
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