"Those Winter Sundays" is a poem written in 1962 by American Robert Hayden (1913–1980), while he was teaching as an English professor at Fisk University. The poem is one of Hayden's most recognised works, together with another poem entitled "Middle Passage". The poem is about the father/son relationship – recalling the poet's memories of his father, realizing that despite the distance between them there was a kind of love, real and intangible, shown by the father's efforts to improve his son's life, rather than by gifts or demonstrative affection. The author's words suggest that the son feels remorse that he failed to recognise this in his father's lifetime. History Authorship history Robert Hayden was born on August 4, 1913, and was brought up in a poor neighborhood by his foster parents, Sue Ellen Westerfield and William Hayden. His life with his foster parents was tumultuous with frequent bouts of verbal and physical violence. He was the first African American to be named as Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress (Poet Laureate). He is famous for writing about cultural themes and African American history. He died on February 25, 1980, at the age of 66. Background "Those Winter Sundays" is about Robert Hayden's boyhood. Robert grew up in a difficult environment, surrounded by fights and poverty, and due to these facts he didn't appreciate his foster parents' love as he should have. Through mental maturity, he regretfully learned that he neither knew nor appreciated the sacrifices that his parents and, generally, every parent makes out of parental love. Publishing history The first, original version of the poem, which was slightly different from the definitive version, was published in Hayden's A Ballad of Remembrance (1962). The common version is part of the book called Collected Poems by Robert Hayden, edited by Frederick Glaysher. In 1997, the poem was ranked in a Columbia University Press survey as the 266th most anthologized poem in English. Title The author wants the title to imply a sense of old age and exhausted behaviour. He is reminding us about those cold and dark Sundays during his youth. The poem is featured by a presence of alliteration and a narrative of many similar Sundays that seemed an enormous obstacle. Even if this poem is characterised by a mundane and unhappy moment of the author's life, he remembers these memories because of their unique "coldness" and "silence".