Explication of "Those Winter Sundays"

In the poem “Those Winter Sundays” by Robert Hayden, a young child tells about all the work his father has to do during the winter. The narrator starts the poem saying “Sundays my father got up too early and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold”. This line appeals to both visual and sensory imagery. The “blueblack” cold refers to dark winter mornings, and the image of these freezing mornings reminds the reader how cold it gets on a winter morning. More visual imagery is used when the father is described as having “cracked hands that ached”. This refers to how easily skin gets dry in the winter. The boy hears the wood “splintering and breaking”, which are examples of auditory imagery. Instead of merely saying that the cracking of the wood was loud, the reader can image the sharp breaking of a log being chopped by an axe. His father is described as the one who “had driven out the cold”. This evokes the idea that it takes a lot of work for the father to keep the house warm. The narrator wants to pinpoints how hard his father works, shown by the observation, “No one ever thanked him”. The narrator also randomly mentions that the father “polished my good shoes as well”. All of these devices help the narrator show how hard his father works for his family.