{"id":30,"date":"2020-07-09T13:08:00","date_gmt":"2020-07-09T13:08:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.holdsuponhappiness.com\/index.php\/2020\/07\/09\/a-poem-for-thursday-89\/"},"modified":"2020-10-26T20:36:59","modified_gmt":"2020-10-26T20:36:59","slug":"a-poem-for-thursday-89","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.holdsuponhappiness.com\/index.php\/2020\/07\/09\/a-poem-for-thursday-89\/","title":{"rendered":"A Poem for a Thursday #89"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n\n
<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Photo by\u00a0<\/span>K\u00fcbra \u00c7OLAK<\/a>\u00a0on\u00a0<\/span>Unsplash<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

Robert Hayden was an American poet, essayist, and educator. He grew up in Detroit, Michigan and experienced a difficult and traumatic childhood. This pushed him to read as an escape from the violence and depression surrounding him. He was the first African-American to hold the position of Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress, now called the US Poet Laureate. He was criticized in the 1960s because he insisted that he be judged “as an American poet rather than a black poet, when for a time there was posited an unreconcilable difference between the two roles.” However, many readers feel his best poetry involves the Black experience and their history.<\/p>\n

Sundays too my father got up early<\/i>
\nand put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,<\/i>
\nthen with cracked hands that ached<\/i>
\nfrom labor in the weekday weather made<\/i>
\nbanked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.<\/i><\/p>\n

I’d wake up and hear the cold splintering, breaking.<\/i>
\nWhen the rooms were warm, he’d call,<\/i>
\nand slowly I would rise and dress,<\/i>
\nfearing the chronic angers of that house,<\/i><\/p>\n

Speaking indifferently to him,<\/i>
\nwho had driven out the cold<\/i>
\nand polished my good shoes as well.<\/i>
\nWhat did I know, what did I know<\/i>
\nof love’s austere and lonely offices?\u00a0<\/i><\/p>\n

Those Winter Sundays<\/i>
\nRobert Hayden<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Photo by\u00a0K\u00fcbra \u00c7OLAK\u00a0on\u00a0Unsplash Robert Hayden was an American poet, essayist, and educator. He grew up in Detroit, Michigan and experienced a difficult and traumatic childhood. This pushed him to read as an escape from the violence and depression surrounding him. He was the first African-American to hold the position of Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress, now called the US Poet Laureate. He was criticized in the 1960s because he insisted that he be judged “as an American poet rather than a black poet, when for a time there was posited an unreconcilable difference between the two roles.” However, many readers feel his best poetry involves the Black experience and their history. 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 up 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?\u00a0 Those Winter Sundays Robert Hayden<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1912,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-poem-for-a-thursday"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.holdsuponhappiness.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.holdsuponhappiness.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.holdsuponhappiness.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.holdsuponhappiness.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.holdsuponhappiness.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.holdsuponhappiness.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2481,"href":"https:\/\/www.holdsuponhappiness.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30\/revisions\/2481"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.holdsuponhappiness.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1912"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.holdsuponhappiness.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.holdsuponhappiness.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.holdsuponhappiness.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}