"Those Winter Sundays" by Robert Hayden I Poem Analysis

[@mugithiperformance6528]

That was great. I'm starting to love poems.

[@annur607]

Impressive Expression.
Respect from BD🇧🇩

[@margaretrealiza3015]

I really adore the juxtapositions in this poem and how you explained it, though whenever I'm reading and analyzing poems I can never know how to differentiate juxtapositions from irony. I feel like I need to go back to my English lessons haha

[@poetryandprejudice]

Well, a juxtaposition is when two things are closely placed together in a literary work to enhance a contrast. (But a contrast is not necessarily ironic). Irony, on the other had, is not dependent on closeness, and, further, irony implies that the opposite of what is expected, done or said, occurs. I'm not sure if this helps...Lol

[@margaretrealiza3015]

@@poetryandprejudice oooooh, that makes a lot of sense. Thank you!

[@yacovmitchenko1490]

An excellent selection and analysis. His other greats include "The Whipping" and "Middle Passage". Although the poem is famous, Hayden remains a largely neglected poet. That is most unfortunate since the man was one of America's best 20th century poets - at least the equal of Eliot and Pound. Seeing as you appreciate Hayden, I would strongly recommend another African American poet, James Emanuel, who is quite similar to Hayden, both temperamentally and aesthetically. Emanuel is even more neglected. Here are a few poems from his major collection "Whole Grain":
For a Farmer
Something slow moves through him, watched by hills.
Something low within each rock receives
His noonday wish, then crumbles rich; so fills
Each furrow that the prairie year upheaves.
His arm has lain with boulders. His copper hand
Has mused on roots, uncaring of barbed wire.
His fist has closed on thistle, and dug the land
For corn October snows have whelmed entire.
Something flows within him in stubborn streams,
And in the parted foliage something lives
In upright green, stirred by the rhythmic gleams
Of his hoe and spade. From worn-out arms he gives;
The earth receives, turns all his pain to soil,
Where he believes, and testifies through toil.
Sonnet For a Writer
Far rather would I search my chaff for grain
And cease at last with hunger in my soul,
Than suck the polished wheat another brain
Refurbished till it shone, by art's control.
To stray across my own mind's half-hewn stone
And chisel in the dark, in hopes to cast
A fragment of our common self, my own,
Excels the mimicry of sages past.
Go forth, my soul, in painful, lonely flight,
Even if no higher than the earthbound tree,
And feel suffusion with more glorious light,
Nor envy eagles their proud brilliancy.
Far better to create one living line
Than learn a hundred sunk in fame's recline.
To Kill a Morning Spider
Like a thick black pencil-mark
whipped suddenly across the pinewood floor,
his blot at the bed corner
leaped to my tightening shoe,
swelled into an eight-legged coil,
oozing fur, it seemed,
angering to be recognized
as spider.
He quivered once, in a paroxysm
seized his stomach, gripped something there.
A tiny thing hopped from him, whirling-
just as my foot, clutching at itself,
smashed his eight legs.
The wheeling little thing, in pausing,
killed itself:
my shoe, an engine on its own,
crushed what was there.
Such is surprise, is destiny:
a spider in disguise,
an insect fleeing,
and we watchers from our sleep awaking
to close their being.
The last one can be compared with Robert Frost's "Design", both in terms of theme and caliber.

[@poetryandprejudice]

Thanks for those! I'll look into Emanuel.