
What makes a family, a family?  What does it mean to be a family?  There are different responsibilities and expectations that keep families together and strengthen relationships.  Robert Hayden, an American poet, wrote “Those Winter Sundays”, reflecting on the memories he shared with his father each Sunday morning.  Lucille Clifton, an American writer and poet, published a very similar work, “Forgiving My Father”, which also recounts the memories she shared with her father. Both Hayden and Clifton emphasize the importance of family, but whereas the former recounts his relationship with his father in a positive light in "Those Winter Sundays," the latter describes the negative relationship she shared with her father in "Forgiving My Father”.

Both literary works were written in the late 1900s, following the 1960s Civil Rights Movement and the beginning of the rise of the Black Arts Movement, which served as a large influence on each of these literary works.  During this time, African-American authors, such as Hayden and Clifton, were inspired by their peers and their works brought diversity to the literary world.  Clifton and Hayden both grew up in black communities, surrounded by poverty, which is evident in their writing and influenced their careers.  Each author was compelled to use poetry to share his or her views about family and its support system, or lack thereof (Foster, 1).  

While each poem describes a different relationship that each narrator shared with his or her father, each story has a specific, similar tone that connects back to the theme of importance of family.  Both poems employ a sad, melancholy tone when describing the memories they shared with their fathers.  The first work by Robert Hayden, “Those Winter Sundays”, expresses a tone of “sadness and regret” (Landau, 3).  Throughout his piece, Hayden describes all of the privileges that he took advantage of when his father was still there.  He remembers when his father would “warm [the room]” and “polish [his] good shoes” (Hayden, 7, 12).  Each of the generous things that his father did for him went unnoticed; as the narrator recounts on these times, he has feelings of regret because he did not recognize the greatness of his father at the time and now it is too late.  This regretful, sad tone illustrates the narrators’ realization of the importance of reality.  In comparison, Clifton’s work, “Forgiving My Father”, also has a very melancholic, but more resentful tone to describe the negative relationship she held with her father.  The speaker in Clifton’s poem refers to her father as “old pauper, old prisoner, old dead man” because he “gave her [mother] all [he] had / which was nothing” (Clifton, 20, 14, 15).  The narrator was placed in the middle of a difficult marital relationship with a dispute over money, which directed her feelings of hate toward her father.  She understands that it is important to have a strong relationship with her father but describes her feelings of abandonment to explain why she has given up on him.  Both these texts share very similar, dejected tones to further express the theme of importance of family through regret or forgiveness. 

While the tones are similar in each poem, the diction that Hayden and Clifton use is very alike and emphasizes the theme of importance of family.  Both poems have a very “colloquial diction” when referring to the relationship that each speaker shares with his or her father (Landau, 4).  For instance, Hayden utilizes phrases such as “got up” and “put on”, which are generally used in everyday, informal speech (Hayden, 1,2).  By doing this, it creates a more calm and familiar tone.  Similarly, Clifton also incorporates this type of diction to reiterate the theme of her poem.  Although Clifton’s tone is more resentful than Hayden’s when referencing the father, she still has a very colloquial diction.  Throughout the entire poem, Clifton uses different words to refer to the father, such as “old man”, “daddy”, and “old lecher, old liar” (Clifton, 5,9,10).  The use of the word “daddy”, in particular, is one that stands out because of its connotation: it is generally thought of in a positive light.  Overall, a colloquial diction helps divert from the melancholic tone and reiterate the importance of family by using these conversational terms.

Both Hayden and Clifton use a similar diction while simultaneously integrating vivid images into their works to further prove their point of the importance of family.  Hayden’s poem recounts the Sunday mornings that the speaker had spent with his father and the responsibilities that were held accountable to him at the time: “Sundays too my father got up early… then with cracked hands that ached / from labor in the weekday weather made / banked fires blazed” (Hayden, 1,3,4).  The speaker presents a very clear image of the father waking up early on Sunday’s to warm the house before anyone else had to get up.  “Thus, when the poet says that his father labored in “the weekday weather,” he not only informs us that his father worked outside but reminds us with the word ‘weather’ that he worked during the cold winter” (Johnson, 1).  This shows the importance of the role that the father played in this family.  As the head of the household, it would be difficult for the family to adapt with the absence of a fatherly figure to prepare the fires and “polish [his] good shoes” (Hayden, 12).  Comparably, Clifton also uses imagery, in a more negative way, to illustrate the responsibilities of the father.  Clifton’s ideas throughout the poem centralize around the father being in debt to his wife and shortchanging her all her life.  The speaker opens with “it is Friday, we have come / to the paying of the bills” to introduce that the father is the main source of income (Clifton, 1,2).  Although the father would “come up empty any Friday”, the speaker shows the importance of a fatherly figure (Clifton, 18).  Together, Clifton and Hayden use imagery to explain the duties of a father to demonstrate the importance of family.  

Ultimately, Robert Hayden and Lucille Clifton centralize each of their poems around the relationship a child has with his or her father to reiterate the importance of family by utilizing similar a tone, diction, and imagery.  Both “Those Winter Sundays” and “Forgiving My Father” have a very colloquial diction to strengthen the theme.  Each of them also shares a melancholic tone when referencing their relationship with their father.  Also, they 
