Those Winter Sundays Analysis

Funky Sonnet“Those Winter Sundays” fills the most basic qualification for a sonnet: it has fourteen lines. Other than that, it’s not very sonnet-ish. The poem doesn’t rhyme and it’s not w...

Our speaker in “Those Winter Sundays” is an adult who looks back on his childhood relationship with his father. In some ways, it’s almost like our speaker is split in two; he’s both the chi...

The speaker of “Those Winter Sundays” speaks to us from the present, but tells us about his childhood, which was cold. Cold, cold, cold. Based on the speaker’s description, we imagine him and...

Even though “Those Winter Sundays” doesn’t rhyme or have a regular meter, it is still a really sound-y poem. (That's really just our way of saying that it sounds cool.) There’s a whole bunc...

As far as titles go, “Those Winter Sundays” feels a bit old and worn to us. It’s like the speaker is looking back on those dark, chilly Sundays, many moons ago, when he was just a sad wee lad...

Universal ExperiencesIt was really important to Robert Hayden that he not be judged, or even interpreted, through the lens of his skin color. He didn’t want to be known as an African-American poe...

“Those Winter Sundays” isn’t too thorny as long as you have a dictionary (or your good pals at Shmoop) handy for those multi-meaning'd words. But don’t let the poem’s short length fool yo...

Hayden says that “Those Winter Sundays” is based on his childhood in Detroit (source), which makes sense because Detroit is freezing. Seriously, the record low for December is -21 degrees. Brrr...

“Those Winter Sundays” is about as un-sexy as poems get.