Third period began looking at connotation and its role in poetry. We began examining Robert Hayden’s “Those Winter Sundays” as we develop an understanding of this important concept.

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?

We’ll be focusing on a couple of words on Monday to see in detail how connotation works in the poem. Today we looked at all the information packed into the opening two words: “Sunday too.”

The stream for third period is available here.

English 8 students continued working on voice, examining how the narrator’s use of sentence fragments contributes to the narrator’s voice and effectively portrays her as an uneducated slave.

We’ll continue this Monday with some work on fragments.

Homework

• English 8: 
  • work on one-pager as necessary;
  • work on article of the week as necessary.
• English I Honors: 
  • find an example of the word “chronic” in use — don’t look it up, just listen for it during the weekend;
  • work on the one-pager as necessary