Ballads of Remembrance by Robert Hayden :: Robert Hayden

In 1962 Robert Hayden wrote a collection of poems entitled Ballads of Remembrance. This collection is comprised of 36 poems that are separated into 4 groups. Each group refers to a different focus of remembrance for example, one group focuses on the struggle of African Americans in terms of finding identity and a find of transcendence. Those wintertime Sundays is part of the group of poems that focuses on remembrances of Haydens childhood, past, and personal struggles.Hayden had an extremely harsh and conflicted childhood. His parents were divorced at a young age, and his mother left him with a foster family in Detroit whose name, Hayden, he ended up adopting. He grew up in a real poor neighborhood called Paradise Valley, which was not a paradise at all. He had separate issues with his foster mother and father, who were both stern people. His father promote Robert to gain an education in order to lift himself out of poverty. Yet, at the same time, his father found it difficult to communicate with his foster son, who always had his chief in a book or was constantly studying.The lack of verbal communication between his father and himself can be seen in his poem Those Winter Sundays. The overall impression of the poem is that love can be communicated in other ways than through words it can be communicated through everyday, planetary actions. For example, in the poem, the father awakens on Sundays too to warm the house with a fire and polish his sons shoes. There is a sense of coldness in the opening of the poem through the linesSundays too my father got up earlyand put his clothes on in the blueblack cold.Haydens father is not only pitch physical warmth to him by making the fire he is also bringing spiritual warmth to him. By the end of the poem, the reader feels an overall sense of warmth as the poet comes to a better understanding of his fathers unappreciated actions.In terms of Romanticism, the idea of transcendence seems to be present in the poem in reg ard to the fact that the father-son family is beyond words. The relationship exists, but it is difficult to articulate. Also the idea that Hayden is rising to a deeper understanding of his relationship with his father is present. There are lines in the poem that stateWhen the rooms were warm, hed call,And slowly I would rise and dress.