The CHIEF February 2025

Meet a Poet By Myley Remkus

“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?

Robert Hayden was born as Asa Bundy Sheffey in 1913. He grew up in Paradise Valley, an African-American neighborhood in Detroit. Although the public does not know the details of his childhood, he spent part of his life raised by foster parents. He was very nearsighted, so he always gravitated towards books rather than sports. He graduated high school in 1932 and went off to attend Detroit City College on a scholarship. He later earned a degree in English literature from the University of Michigan. Some of his accomplishments include being the first Black faculty member in Michigan’s English department and becoming the first African American to be chosen as Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress. He lived a long life writing influential poetry on the Black experience and history. He wrote nine collections of poetry during his life, many upon Black historical figures and events in history. At sixty-six years of age, Robert died of cancer, surrounded by his beloved wife and daughter. In “Those Winter Sundays,” Hayden is speaking from a reflection point of view. He is thinking about when he was a child and would watch his dad wake up on Sundays. Despite the cold weather, he would provide for his family. In the first stanza, one can assume that the father worked very hard during the week, but he is continuing to get up on a Sunday (the day of rest) and continue the cycle. Additionally, the first stanza states that no one is appreciating his hard work. It seems that Hayden is realizing that he did not see the sacrifices his dad made. This poem also seems to touch on how Hayden’s dad showcased his fatherly love. This poem shows a family relationship not through dialogue, but rather the small gestures that may go unnoticed by the children.