Poetry is a unique form of art that enables readers to feel the most complexed and nuanced emotions. Unlike the language of prose, the poetic language is expressive and relies more on various decorations (ReadWriteThink, 2008). To maximize the emotional impact on readers, poets use a broad set of literary devices, such as similes, metaphors, mood, imagery, and so on. The poems “Those Winter Days” by Robert Hayden, “My Father’s Hats” by Mark Irwin, and “My Papa’s Waltz” by Theodore Roethke prove that the use of similes, metaphors, and mood helps to describe one’s deepest thoughts and faint childhood impressions.
Each of the three poems has its unique mood, which accounts for the overall impression from reading. For example, “My Papa’s Waltz” by Roethke is joyful because it tells about a boy who is having a good time dancing with his father before going to bed. “My Father’s Hats” by Irwin begins nostalgically, describing the protagonist who recalls the days of his childhood while touching and smelling hats of his father. However, the poem ends in a lonely and sad mood because the protagonist reveals that his father is dead, and he feels like standing on the canyon floor instead of climbing trees (Irwin, 2004). “Those Winter Days” by Hayden has a remorseful mood because the protagonist feels sorry for being indifferent to his caring and hardworking father.
Similes are used to make a text more lyrical and add artistic and imaginative details to it. In “My Papa’s Waltz,” the protagonist has to hold his father tight “like death” because he enjoys dancing with him, although he feels dizzy from the whiskey on father’s breath (Roethke, 1942). This simile emphasizes how badly the child wants to keep dancing with his Papa. The grip of death is something absolutely inescapable and persistent, and so is the grip of a happy boy who holds his drunk father. This literary device helps a reader to understand the deepest emotions of the protagonist.
Metaphors also compare two things, but they do it in a more sophisticated way without using words such as “like” or “as.” This adds new, deeper meanings to usual activities or objects. For example, the protagonist of “My Father’s Hats,” who recalls his father, is “thinking of his fabulous / sleep” (Irwin, 2004). Here, Irwin compares death with sleep, referring to the Biblical idea that dead people are sleeping in their graves until the Judgment Day. This implies that death is just a period in one’s existence, and the protagonist hopes to see his father again someday. His recollections of the past added to this metaphor account for the message that nothing is constant, and all things, both joyful and sad, will pass.
The device called imagery uses descriptive language to appeal to senses of a reader, invoking deep associations and impressions. Imageries help to imagine a depicted scene by describing colors, sounds, smells, and so on. In “Those Winter Days,” the father puts “his clothes on in the blueblack cold” (Hayden, 1966). The words “blueblack cold” help readers to imagine the chill of an early morning in winter when it is still dark, and everything is tinted blue because the sun has not risen yet. Although it is very cold and dark, the father, being an unsung hero, gets up to restart a fire and warm up the house.
The analysis of these three poems shows that literary devices allow poets to express the most nuanced and complex emotions, thoughts, and impressions. Similes, metaphors, mood, and imagery add new unusual meanings to activities or objects, create references to other ideas, and help to imagine scenes by appealing to senses of a reader. Poetry shows that just a couple of words can have incredible power because they create emotional depth that appeals directly to the reader’s psyche.
