"Robert Hayden"
The poem Those Winter Sundays by Robert Hayden tells about a hardworking foster father who does not get any appreciation from anyone. Robert Hayden was brought up in a poor family and he admired a foster father next door. Robert Hayden attended University of Michigan with H. Auden where he got much influence from Auden to continue writing. Robert also appreciated the work of other poets and his became his role models. Since Robert was black, most of his writings concentrated on race and he had lots of concern with racial expression.
This particular poem was about a father who would wake up early all days even Sundays. The man had very hard chore all through the week and his hands would ache on Sundays but opted no t to rest his aching hands (Meyer 241). He could wake up very early on Sundays to make fire but could not get any compliment or appreciation for his endurance. His son could not wake up until the room got warm from the fire his father could make. The son would then wake up lazily and fill the house with anger. He seldom appreciates what his father does even after polishing his shoes. The son later regrets his deeds as he experiences solitude in the offices. The most established theme in the poem is regret of the narrator as he explicates how he had an extremely caring foster father but refused to appreciate and recognized his love at all. In the poem, different words have been used for same purpose and this confuses the readers.
Robert uses the word “blue-black” which is a very rare word used to create dissonance since it carries harmful connotations in order to empower the damaging conditions resulting from cold imagery. The poem illustrates that the father only called the speaker when the room warmed up (Hayden 7) can be take as a clear indication that the room became warmed up both by fire and by the presence of the father. The foster father is illustrated as a man who drove out the cold (Hayden 11). In this line the speaker is shown to regret his attitude towards the father; more so, failing to appreciate his father’s effort to make life comfortable for him. The poem depicts the father as a positive character who ensured that the son was consistently happy despite his mockery as illustrated; speaking indifferent to him (Hayden 10). The speaker never cared the effort of his father although the poem depicts how his father was tire and had aching hands.
Robert Hayden does not break the lines of this poem to make rhyme but to point purposes. The poems lines have enough weight to present themselves and make the reader grasp the main theme with ease. Every line in the poem has a point; this makes everything clear since there is no combination of ideas (Welsch 34). While some of the word in the poem like cold and harshness reflects regrets from the speaker, other words like warm reflects rest and appreciation for the foster father even when he has already passed on. In the poem, hands that are ached and filled with crack depict regrets from the speaker for not appreciating his father’s effort when he was alive. Robert Hayden’s poem is filled with harsh and cold imageries from the father son relationship. He has also employed metaphors in his work in order to explain grief-stricken regrets of the speaker (Goldstein & Robert, 127). By the lines driven out cold the poet signifies the efforts of foster father to make sure his son’s life was comfortable.
The poem later shows how the son acknowledges positive efforts that were made by his father in the lines banked fire blaze. It shows that the fire that was made by the fire is the one that kept the speaker warm and it was a big fire. The father made sure that this fire was big enough to warm the room so that the son could wake up. The use of the words cold and warm in the poem is allusions that bring contrasting imagery in Robert Hayden’s poem. This is a sonnet poem with 14 lines and images created by words that carry a lot of weight.
This poet typically shows the effectiveness of artful imagery, succinctness and sarcasm. It has a very strong base and it is written on strong sentences that have been arranged in a way that the reader feels it easy to grasp the concept. The poet uses easy comprehensible words and replicates the words many times to help the reader understand the meaning with ease. This poem by Robert Hayden is popular due to its rich style. Robert has used strong imagery that makes it supportive to other poets.
What We Talk about When We Talk about Love
“Raymond Carver”
What we talk about when we talk about love is a short story by Raymond Carver. The story is an illusive simple read. It is a story of two couples pondering on matters of love. In his work, Carver cunningly weaves some intense mediation on matters of love, commitment, passion, violence and death. The story as light as it may seem, challenges the reader to evaluating their own philosophies and ideologies on some extremely complicated themes. Carver’s story starts with Laura and Nick, and Terri and Mel as the two couples taking a couple a bottle of gin together in an afternoon, when the subject of love images. The story reveals how Terri loved her violent ex-husband so much though he tried to kill her.
In the story, Laura, Terri, Mel and Nick are shown to consume profuse amounts of gin as they discuss on the nature of love. During their conversation, the more intoxicated they become, the more the growing of confusion about the subject matter (love) and how to delineate it. The four friends are shown to have gathered are talk about love as they drink gin and pouring; sipping and stirring seem to punctuate their conversation. The more these friends get drunk the more they become incoherent and at the end stop the conversation completely. In the story, drinking serves as a ritual, as friends pass a bottle of gin to one another around the table and makes toasts to the matter under discussion – love. Towards the end of the story, as they discuss going out for dinner, Mel insists that they must finish their gin as if only draining the bottle is the only way to free them from this elusive discussion.
The conversation on whether Terri’s ex-husband loved her and what love is goes on. It rapidly becomes clear that the four characters in the story are clueless on matters of love. Arguably, they know the have love and they even think they have it but apparently they can not figure out what this indescribable IT is. While the couples in the story find id hard to define love and at the same time becomes drunk with time, the situation becomes pathetic along the way. Commonly, we all struggle to comprehend what this intense, crazy, life-changing and beautiful love can be. And maybe very few exceptionally gifted poets have been in a position to define it. However, people are able to recognize when love sets in, though the language to express love is hard. The couples find it tough to define love and instead find themselves conversing about the language of love, how they exhibit care, show their emotions, passion and even wild sense of love felt by Terri’s ex-husband. As they talk about love, they create metaphors on how they imagine love makes them feel.
At some point, Nick, who was silent for long periods on the issue of love, kisses his new wife Laura’s hand. This gesture seems unnatural and highlights that Nick is completely out of his element on the issue at hand. He further explains that, more to being in love, he and his wife like each other and enjoy each others company. These are not words to use to sweep a gal of her feet; but it seems Nick is the most honest of the four characters in the story in his recognition of the failure of people ordinary language to convey the speechless quality of love. According to Nick, love is absolute and this seems to be the truest avowal to all the characters in the story. In its entirety, Carvers story is a great read, since the characters in the story do not seem to come up with an agreement on what love really is. In the story, love means different things in every person and this is what every person can just understand.
Some of the themes evident in the story include;
Indefinable Nature of Love – thought out the story, the nature of love remains indefinable and elusive despite the effort all characters have put to define it. For instance, Mel tries many times to pinpoint the meaning of love though all his examples are not conclusive. When Mel asserts that he will enlighten every person on what love is he ends up in a muddled mediation about how strange love is and how he has loves more than one person. In his endeavor to explain exactly what love is, he finally ends up in a bitter outburst against his ex-wife.
Dominant obsessions – in his work Carver has preferred the term obsession to demonstrate the impermanence of love and lack of verbal expression to elaborately explain the complexity of human passion. In this story, all the four characters debates on the nature of love but they all realize hoe their ideas are extremely different and instead of discussion the matter at hand “love” they end up discussing other issues like misunderstanding, jealous and pain. Factually, the characters talk accentuates their alienation from each other. To some commentators, each couple represents different phase of love i.e. Nick and Laura for instance, are in their beginning stages- idealistic period. On the other hand, Mel and Terri are demonstrated to be in an extra cynical couple.
Inadequacy of Language- although all the four characters talks much about love they never manage to define what love really is. They can’t adequately explain the abstract subject. Mel does most of the talking but all his boated stories seem to come up with a definite conclusion to the question of love. On other instants, Terri speaks a lot about Ed her ex-lover. She believes that Ed loved her regardless of how the other thinks of it. Nick and Laura do not have much to talk about on this matter and they heavily rely on gesture to clarify what language seems not to communicate (Bell 46). Carver simply indicates that there are no words clear enough to explain what love is all about and perhaps the only reason why the four friends becomes silent at the end on the story.
Sun is one symbol that has been used in the story. At first, the story begins when the sun is bright and the sun is already gone by the time the story is ending. This is symbolic in the senses that lose of clarity and happiness in evident as the four characters in the story grow increasingly confused about the illusive nature of love. When the story is beginning, Nick notes how the kitchen is bright and compares his friends to excited kids who are at consensus for something forbidden (Englander 145). The conversation is light and optimistic as just friends chat on a gin-soaked afternoon. Conversely, as the conversation about love becomes more complex and clueless, the sun in the kitchen gradually slips away. Notably, Nick realizes that the sun has changed and gotten thinner and shortly the sun becomes disappears. As it fades off completely, the conversation on the other hand devolves into Mel’s drunken threats against his ex-wife and this includes the fantasy he would get in slaying her. At the end of Carvar’s story the f our characters are seated completely drunk and the sun has gone.
Carver’s story has been termed as minimalist by its critics but Carver rejects this term since the story emphasizes the narrative’s form and neglects its human focus. It explores the vicissitudes of people emotion, especially due to its unpredictability and control of fanatical love.
Work Cited
Carver, Raymond. What we talk about when we talk about love. London: Vintage Classic, 2009. Print.
Hayden, Robert Earl. Those winter Sundays. NY, Providence Public Library, 1999
Welsch, Kathleen A. Those winter Sundays: female academics and their working-class parents. Lanham, Md: University Press of America, 2005. Print.
Bell, Rob. What we talk about when we talk about God. San Francisco: HarperOne, 2013. Print.
Carver, Raymond. Beginners: the original version of what we talk about when we talk about love. London: Vintage, 2010. Print.
Englander, Nathan. What we talk about when we talk about Anne Frank. New York: Knopf, 2012. Print.
Goldstein, Laurence, and Robert Chrisman. Robert Hayden: essays on the poetry. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2001. Print.
Meyer, Michael. The compact Bedford introduction to literature: reading, thinking, writing. Boston: Bedford/St. Martins, 2009. Print.
