?Those Winter Sundays? Essay, Research Paper

Joshua Erd, Box 630

Fawn Knight

ASEN 101-02

29 November 2000

Those Winter Sundays Review

The poem of ?Those Winter Sundays? has a very interesting and peculiar ending. The author of the poem leaves the ending open. By an open ending I mean the author ends the poem with a question. Since the poem ends in this fashion it makes it hard to interpret.

At the end of the poem it says ?What did I know, what did I know?. This is a hard line in the poem to understand. In a way the author is telling a story of his former child hood. The child hood of the author was a tough one. He was raised by a neighbor who loved him as their own. I am sure he had to ask him self if he knew what love was all about. Where are my parents and why are they not here to show me their love?

The author was setting a tone for the poem. He was taking what he knew about love in his own life and applying it to his poetry. He was looking back at his own life and saying what do I know about anything. On the other hand, the repeated phrase also sounds a note of defiance. The author may want to defend his child hood.

Johnson, Jeannine. An Overview of ?Those Winter Sundays?.

Poetry for Students 1997: Galenet.

Kentucky Christian Coll. Lib., Grayson.

29 Nov. 2000 http://www.gale.net/

Hayden, Robert. ?Those Winter Sundays?. An Introduction to

Literature. 12th ed. Ed, Sylvan Barnet et al.

New York: Longman, 2001. 920-921.