What did I know, What did I know?

I love the sound of the low oo sounds mixed with the crisp consonants. To me it sounds like a cold winter day mixed with the blaze of fire place. Also the lower oo sounds give it a more somber feel while the consonants give quick sharp tones that cut perhaps like the regret and guilt Hayden feels for not appreciating his father. It is so crazy to me that this 14 lined poem can have so much emotion behind those lines.
When Hayden repeats "What did I know" I can almost see him shaking his head while he says this. Those last two lines say a lot. When he was small he had no real understanding of "love's austere and lonely offices" but looking back now it seems as if he has experienced and now knows of the lonely offices. He wishes that he had known all these things before so that he could love appreciate his father more for the little things he did that supposedly went unnoticed by Hayden. It made me think of my own mother and all the things she has done for me. Until this last year I have had no real understanding of the depth of her love for me and all the things that go with it. Looking back now I regret being the awful teenager that I was. What did I know?

Those Winter Sundays

Love goes unnoticed all the time by children all the time and the parents sometimes rarely ever hear a thank you or any sign of appreciation. Also as the parents get older things get harder to do and the children just sit and watch, never offering to help and again the thought of thanking them doesn't even come to mind. I believe that is what the author of this poem was trying to grasp. Robert Hayden must have been recalling things that his parents did without complaint and how the affectionate actions of love can have very little company; of how good deeds sometimes goes unnoticed. I'm sorry to say that I do this to my poor mother all the time. I am very aware that I do this and have tried to change it, but I always seem to fail in the end. Old habits die hard, especially ones that have been made since birth. As babies our parents did everything for us and as we got older we started to take care of ourselves, but even then I think we expect our parents to do somethings on a whim with or without asking and not thanking them for it.

The words we say

I have always loved poetry because of the freedom they give. They can show the reader many different ways words can paint our emotions or experiences. Like you mentioned on the blog, every word means something. The author purposely wrote his poem a specific way. I like in the poem Those Winter Sundays, how Hayden uses a lot of oo sounds in his words which gave it a more relaxed feel just like I feel on winter mornings. At the very beginning when Hayden used "too" in regards to his father getting up, it seemed to imply that his father got up early everyday of the week but on sundays he didn't have to. Later in the poem when the line was repeated twice, made me feel how deep his regret was for not understanding how much his father loved him and appreciating the things that he did for his family. Hayden talks about these experiences in past tense which makes me believe that this is a long time ago and maybe even after the passing of his father. Through the sounds of the different words, the words themselves and how the words are strung together can really make a poem come alive in the reader.

"Too" Question!

The poem "Those Winter Sundays" has the phrase too in the first line because Sundays are supposed to be days of rest, but just like every other day. The son or daughter makes it seem like she never really appreciated what the father did for the family. The line "No one ever thanked him." Has the air of guilt in it. The poem has a feel of an early morning and a lagging morning. It has the feel of getting up early and dragging yourself out of bed to do the work that no one else will do. 

The son or daughter seems like he/she regrets not helping out his father more and obviously never fully appreciated all the father did. The question at the end of the poem expresses the child's question of why he/she never noticed how much the father loved him/her. The father seems austere and obviously did show a lot of love to his children through sympathy or through loving words, but helped and showed love through everyday acts of love. Like shinning the child's shoes. 

Prompts - "Those Winter Sundays" and "Autumn Elegy"

For some reason, there were a lot of you absent today; in fact, there have been a lot of absenses lately. Please re-read the attendance policy on the syllabus. If you are not in class, you cannot do well, and I don't want you to be surprised when you lose your participation points and a big chunk of your grade. As I am grading your midterms, it is very apparent to me who has been in class and who has not. I'm particularly surprised that so many of you were gone today when I was introducing our poetry unit. Unless you are already an expert on how to read and analyze poetry, you should not be missing class. (There are a few of you who have contacted me about being absent; I am not talking to you.)

Don't feel obligated to answer every part of the following questions (there are a lot of questions within each prompt), but there should be something here that you can respond to. I think you will discover that when you start to write about a poem it will open up to you in exciting ways.

1. In any poem, but perhaps especially in a short poem, little things can have a big impact. How, for example, does the word “too” in the first line of “Those Winter Sundays” affect the way you read the poem? Certainly Hayden could have written "Sundays my father got up early," but he didn't. (It's always worth your time to consider what choices the poet did not make in addition to the evident choices on the page). How does the repetition of the question “What did I know?” affect you? Why do you think Hayden asks it twice rather than once? Why do you think the poem is called "Those Winter Sundays" and not just "Winter Sundays"? Why do you think the poem ends with a question, rather than a statement? Again, nothing in the poem is arbitrary or by accident, so everything is fair game for analysis.

With that in mind, consider the sounds of the poem. Read it aloud and notice the way it works in your mouth and in your ears. As we discussed today, a poem is itself an experience, not just about an experience. How does the play of sounds in "Those Winter Sundays" (change of vowel registers, assonance, consonance, alliteration, etc.), make it into an experience?

2. Autumn is literally present in "Autumn Elegy," but it is also used metaphorically. Discuss the metaphorical uses of the season. What properties of autumn are transferred to something else, helping you to see it in a new way? Notice, too, how the poem's form is related to its content. Why is it divided into four-line stanzas? Why aren't the stanzas autonomous? (In other words, why do the sentences cross over the white spaces between stanzas?) Why does the poem begin and end with the same word? Also notice that the poem rhymes, although the rhymes are generally slant (not exact). Slant rhymes don't call attention to themselves like exact rhymes do, and because the lines of the poem are not end-stopped, we tend to read right through the rhyming words. One might say that the rhyme is disguised (many readers don't notice the rhyme when they first read the poem). How might any or all of this relate to the poem's theme? How does Norris use sound (assonance, consonance, alliteration) to connect words together? How does he use different vowel registers to evoke certain emotions? For whom is this elegy written, and why is autumn an important part of it?

There is a lot more to talk about in both of these poems, but this is enough to get us started for Thursday. See you then.

Blackboard

Here is a link to "Engine Work." Please read it before class tomorrow along with the other required reading. I have also posted it to Blackboard in case you want to print it out. My internet was down all weekend, so I didn't get a chance to post any prompts. Enjoy a day off from posting, but please make sure you get all the reading done. See you tomorrow.

Child or Adult?

The son tells the dad that he is the one who has to worry about everything - and we know that he doesn't mean the physical parts of life, like finding food, making shelters. The son is referring to their humanity, their consciences, their moral decisions. The son is the one who wants to always give food, clothing and shelter to everyone they meet who isn't a "bad guy." He displays his unspoken faith in God and a desire to fulfill his small mission on this earth. He also carries a heavy burden of the hope. Even when is father is tired and fearful, his son is hopeful that they will find other good people and there is goodness in the earth still.

I also feel that the son knows that at some point in time the father will leave him and he will be alone to carry on. He does worry about everything because he tries to make their life whole, not just survival.