A Reply to this Discussion Post: Module 4 Discussion: Two Poems Reflecting on Fathers

 
Sep 12, 2017Sep 12 at 5:35pmManage Discussion Entry
I believe these poems are similar in how they depict hard working fathers. I imagine both work on some short of farm or ranch by how the boys describe the conditions of their father’s hands.
In Those Winter Sundays, as the author is remembering the past he is doing it out of admiration. The author says, “no one ever thanked him.” As a young boy he did not understand how hard his father worked to keep the house hold running in what seemed to be rough conditions. In the last two lines, “what did I know, what did I know of love’s austere and lonely offices?” I think he’s describing a love that is not vocally or emotionally expressed between him and his father, but he understands that his father loved him.
In, My Papa’s Waltz, at first it seemed like a bad memory and possibly an abusive situation, but the more I read the poem I did not see it that way. I boy remembering a time his father swept him up and danced him off to bed. The mother may have not been amused due to how drunk and chaotic the waltzing was, but I think for the author it is a happy memory. Both poems describe an unspoken love.