Close Reading and Analysis of 'Those Winter Sundays' by Robert Hayden, Lecture notes of Music

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R O B E R T H A Y D E N

Those Winter Sundays

Mini-lesson

— Synesthesia ¡ an implied metaphor in which an attribute associated with one of the physical senses is applied to a term associated with another sense ¡ Examples: ÷ “screaming pain” ÷ “cool whispers”

Close Reading

— Use three columns to identify the imagery evoking different senses—one color for touch, another for sight, and a third for sound. ¡ Identify the emotional effect of each image and annotate these emotional effects in the margin as specifically as possible. — Find figurative as well as literal examples of warmth and cold. — Find examples of synesthesia. — Identify images in which specificity creates a vivid sensory impression.

Discussion and Analysis

— Describe the speaker’s shifts from past to present, noting the way sensory imagery vivifies past experiences. — Discuss specific word choices and phrases: ¡ “blueblack cold” ¡ “cracked hands” ¡ “fire blaze” ¡ “cold splintering, breaking” — What are the “chronic angers of that house”? — Does the narrator express conflicted feelings about his childhood home? — Pay close attention to the closing lines of the poem and the speaker’s expression of regret as he looks back on his childhood. ¡ What are “love’s austere and lonely offices”?

Example

Saturdays , too, my sister slept in late and threw on yesterday’s sweatshirt in the chilly afternoon …