Learning to Analyze Poetry

Learning to Analyze Poetry

Those Winter Sundays

by Robert Hayden

Sundays too my father got up early

and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,

then with cracked hands that ached

from labor in the weekday weather made

banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.

I'd wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.

When the rooms were warm, he'd call,

and slowly I would rise and dress,

fearing the chronic angers of that house,

Speaking indifferently to him,

who had driven out the cold

and polished my good shoes as well.

What did I know, what did I know

of love's austere and lonely offices?

"Those Winter Sundays"(p. 532) is another strong example of how a writer employs concrete, specific, sensory description to create literal images for readers to imaginatively conjure.

At the beginning of "Those Winter Sundays" the speaker is thinking back to the coldness of his childhood. He remembers the cold in literal as well as figurative terms. First he focuses on the Sundays when his father would wake up early and get the fire going before waking the rest of the household. But the poem is really about how the speaker rues the fact that, growing up, he never really understood the meaning of his father's actions -- how they were the way he expressed his love for the family, for the speaker.

The concrete, specific words in the poem show that the speaker does finally appreciate how his father gave of himself to keep the family going. He now recognizes that "Sundays too" his father would forfeit his well-earned rest and wake up in the "blueblack cold" to start the fire. The fact that the father gets up early on Sunday is significant, because this should be his day to sleep late, having labored all week, but he sacrifices that for the family. The "blueblack cold" suggests the very early hour and the bitterness of the cold. It sounds painfully cold, like a black-and-blue bruise. His "cracked hands" suggest that he's a hard-working man, that he's worked a long time. He might be old, or getting old, or getting old before he's old. That's something the speaker might not have realized as a young boy, but that he can appreciate now. The "blazing" fire that the father creates represents the warmth that he literally brings to the house, despite his inability to bring any personal warmth into it. As the boy hears him prepare the fire, he hears the "cold splintering, breaking" and may be intimidated by the sound; he stays huddled in bed listening, and doesn't consider getting up to help. He's hiding, it seems. He might be afraid of the "breaking" sound of the wood, associating it with the "chronic anger" that rules the house, which is mentioned a few lines later. When he hears his father call, he gets up, but reluctantly, in fear. To the boy, the blazing fire doesn't signify warmth, but anger, maybe his father's anger.

But by the end of the poem we realize the speaker understands more as an adult than he did as a boy. He now realizes that his father has "driven out the cold," which sounds like he understands that his father was fighting the cold, making an effort to defeat it. That he "drives" out the cold sounds like he's protecting the family from an invader or a thief. And he understands now that the act of polishing his good shoes was his way of taking pride in the little they had. The speaker ends the poem on a note of self-incrimination: "What did I know, what did I know / Of love's austere and lonely offices?" That he repeats that penultimate line seems to signify his frustration with himself for not seeing more deeply into his father's true feelings. And very tellingly, his choice of the words "austere" and "lonely offices" show how his understanding has matured. He now understands that his father took caring for the family very seriously -- that he saw it as grim, "austere" work, but that he was willing to make the necessary sacrifices to accomplish it. And he understands, now, that his father expressed his love by tirelessly meeting those grim, inconvenient obligations, those duties, even on those bitterly cold winter Sundays. Maybe every day was as tough as a bitterly cold winter Sunday to this man. But he went on anyway -- he never abandoned his obligations. And now the child -- perhaps he's a parent himself now -- understands.

You Fit Into Me

By Margaret Atwood

You fit into me

like a hook into an eye

a fish hook

an open eye

METAPHOR AND SIMILE

"You Fit Into Me"by Margaret Atwood (handout) is a brief little thing, but as you read into it, more and more meaning emerges from the one simple comparison she's drawing. You've hooked me but the attachment is painful, fatal maybe. The fact that the "you" (the other) is inside the "me" (the speaker) may represent an invasion, maybe a sexual invasion, maybe an emotional, psychological one. Maybe this relationship has really screwed this speaker up, has really hurt her. (I'll call the speaker a "her" for convenience, but notice the gender isn't specified-this could go either way.) The fact that the hook is going into they "eye" may be significant, too. The pain goes right to the soul (the eye often represents a person's soul). And there's that play on "eye" versus "I." If you read the last line "an open I" it still makes sense. In a relationship you usually make yourself pretty vulnerable but that's the risk. To make any kind of deep relationship work, you have to open yourself up. Maybe the speaker went into this relationship with her eyes open but she got hurt anyway. There's just all kinds of ways to read into this. It's a beautiful little nut of a poem.

The Secretary Chant

By Marge Piercy

My hips are a desk,

From my ears hang

chains of paper clips.

Rubber bands form my hair.

My breasts are quills of

mimeograph ink.

My feet bear casters,

Buzz. Click.

My head is a badly organized file.

My head is a switchboard

where crossed lines crackle.

Press my fingers

and in my eyes appear

credit and debit.

Zing. Tinkle.

My navel is a reject button.

From my mouth issue canceled reams.

Swollen, heavy, rectangular

I am about to be delivered

of a baby

Xerox machine.

File me under W

because I wonce

was

a woman.

A funny (but still kind of serious) poem that works figuratively is Marge Piercy's"The Secretary Chant"(p. 531). This poem uses metaphor throughout to humorously get the message out there that this worker (a woman), in this job, feels dehumanized, reduced to a function. Every portion of her body is objectified-she's the desk, the paper clips, the rubber bands, mimeograph ink, casters. Her head goes "buzz and click" and she's like a disorganized file. She's aware that those around her assume she has no intellect to speak of; to them, her mind is all buzz, all click, a crackled, crossed switchboard. She's nothing but machine, spitting out various kinds of paper. To her boss, perhaps, she feels she is no more than the sum of all of the objects which surround her, and which she manages. Although the speaker characterizes herself the way she feels she's been characterized by others, we're aware, I think, that she's satirizing the way she's been characterized. In the end she purposely, sarcastically misspells "wonce" to jab at those who've dehumanized and devalued her. Maybe the machine is breaking down?

The Hand That Signed the Paper

BY DYLAN THOMAS

The hand that signed the paper felled a city;

Five sovereign fingers taxed the breath,

Doubled the globe of dead and halved a country;

These five kings did a king to death.

The mighty hand leads to a sloping shoulder,

The finger joints are cramped with chalk;

A goose’s quill has put an end to murder

That put an end to talk.

The hand that signed the treaty bred a fever,

And famine grew, and locusts came;

Great is the hand that holds dominion over

Man by a scribbled name.

The five kings count the dead but do not soften

The crusted wound nor stroke the brow;

A hand rules pity as a hand rules heaven;

Hands have no tears to flow.

Synechdoche, says your textbook (Bedford Intro. to Lit. 622), is a figure of speech in which part of something is used to signify the whole. In"The Hand That Signed the Paper"(p.622) Dylan Thomas focuses our attention on the hand of the ruler, his five "sovereign fingers," instead of the whole person. We come to see how this "hand" represents his imperial power--and how such a hand "rules pity as a hand rules heaven; hands have no tears to flow." The detached power with which the ruler. The hand has no pity, no feelings; it's detached from the heart, and cannot feel the horrible consequences of its actions. The pen which signs the paper is perhaps not mightier than the sword; itisthe sword.

Metonymyis a closely related figure of speech in which some thing or some quality closely associated with the subject is substituted for it. In "The Hand That Signed the Paper" you see metonymy used when in the second stanza, the speaker notes that "A goose's quill has put an end to murder / That put an end to talk." The goose quill is something closely associated with the ruler's power to put his signature to the service of war and murder.

http://brainstorm-services.com/wcu-lit/craft-of-poetry.html

Player Piano

By John Updike

My stick fingers click with a snicker

And, chuckling, they knuckle the keys;

Light footed, my steel feelers flicker

And pluck from these keys melodies.

My paper can caper; abandon

Is broadcast by dint of my din,

And no man or band has a hand in

The tones I turn on from within.

At times I'm a jumble of rumbles,

At others I'm light like the moon,

But never my numb plunker fumbles,

Misstrums me, or tries a new tune.

*Anotate for onomatopoeia and cacophonous diction. How does the diction enhance the poem?