Episode 116 Those Winter Sundays - Robert Hayden

The first ever Close Talking episode to drop on Christmas day is a fittingly wintery pick - Connor and Jack contemplate the many layers of meaning in the classic poem "Those Winter Sundays" by Robert Hayden. They cover everything from the five love languages, to the lifelong impact of Adverse Childhood Experiences, and the limits of the sonnet.

More on Robert Hayden, here:

Those Winter Sundays
By: Robert Hayden

Sundays too my father got up early
and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,
then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather made
banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.

I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.
When the rooms were warm, he’d call,
and slowly I would rise and dress,
fearing the chronic angers of that house,

Speaking indifferently to him,
who had driven out the cold
and polished my good shoes as well.
What did I know, what did I know
of love’s austere and lonely offices?