Type a new keyword(s) and press Enter to search

Poems of Fathers

 

            
             It has become extremely apparent after reading and listening to "My Papa's Waltz" by Theodore Roethke and "Those Winter Sundays" by Robert Hayden that both of these poems have been written about hard working fathers. After looking at the years these poems were published I"d have to say that it's not kind of a trend during a certain time. Both of the poems were short and very descriptive. They describe no more than one day in the life of the characters. After extensively reading and listening to both of these poems I have come up with the idea that both of the fathers in each poems are hard working, disciplining men. The word choices in each of these poems are different by far.
             When reading each of these poems it's easy to figure out that the poems were written from a son's perspective of his father. This is definitely the strong point of how these poems are alike. I"m not sure if the authors were trying to relate this to a bad experience that they had as children of if they are just trying to describe their fathers. Both poems give you an idea of these men being hard-working strong-willed individuals. In Roethke's poem the lines "The hand that held my wrist, was battered on one knuckle" gave me the idea that the father was a hard-working man (758). In Hayden's poem it was the line "then with cracked hands that ached from labor in the weekday weather made"(1204). This is the main point that I think the poems are alike. Both fathers in each poem are referred to as having rough looking hands. These two fathers in the poems are also alike with the discipline that they provide. Hayden describes this disciplining with words such as "austere" and "indifferently". Roethke's poem on the other hand suggest the father disciplines throughout the whole poem.
             The language choice of these poems were not alike in anyway except for trying to describe some of the same things. Roethke's poem seemed to have a more causal word choice as a whole.


Essays Related to Poems of Fathers