What Feelings Does This Poem Evoke? What Techniques Does Hayden Use to Evoke Them?

What feelings does this poem evoke? What techniques does Hayden use to evoke them?

Those Winter Sundays by Robert Hayden was a very confusing poem to me. The first two stanzas were the easiest to understand but once I started reading the last one I got lost. He used many analogies in his poem and it made me think really hard. Unfortunately even though I thought and looked up words I couldn't put it all together. He used the analogy of "and put his clothes on in the blueback cold". This made no sense to me because when I looked up blueback that was a fish. I tried putting different ideas together but nothing made sense. It didn't correspond with the rest of the poem.

This poem evoked sadness and regret. This poem was actually very depressing to read. Although it was very well written I thought that the author could have been clearer on what he was talking about. I know that the author was talking about his father and how he is sad that he took advantage of him. This made me sad because it put a very lonely, dark picture in my head. I imagined one of those really sad movies where the father is very old and sad and all he wants to do is be loved by his children but that doesn't seem to be happening even though he didn't do anything wrong. It was hard even thinking about it!

Hayden used some very interesting techniques that most poets use. He used the technique of hidden meaning. He put this strong meaning in the poem and you can sense it but you can't quite figure it out. It keeps you thinking on your toes when reading this poem. You had to tear apart each word to try and figure out what it meant. You got the sense of loneliness and sorrow but there was something else. He was trying to put forth a point without bluntly giving it away. This poem takes a lot of critical thinking and you ask yourself a lot of questions while reading it. I think it's a beautiful yet very complicated poem.