During the life of a young man, a father figure is essential to the maturity and adulthood that a young man needs to become a wise man well-thinking. In the two poems “These Winter Sundays” and “My Father's Waltz”, the authors remember a past event that happened to them in their lives. These events are deeply etched in their minds and both must report them to their father. Robert Hayden's "Those Winter Sundays" is about a memory he wishes wasn't real; a feeling of regret in this poem is the main feeling we feel as readers. In “My Papa's Waltz” by Theodore Roethke we see a completely different situation. In this past memory, the poet's child is filled with fear and dread and we can see that this situation reinforces the poet's past. Between the two poets, they both don't deserve the situation they find themselves in. Instead, if they had to somehow “change” their childhood, these poems would not have been written and every poet would be better off for it. “Those Winter Sundays,” by Robert Hayden, talks about his childhood and how his father did everything possible to please his boy and others, but never showed gratitude or appreciation. Now an adult, the poet begins to feel guilty and unhappy for never having let his father know that he was a good man. The poem begins by telling us about the situations in which the poet's father would go to do things for others, but no one ever thanked him, he was not recognized. On Sundays, too, my father got up early and dressed in the blue-black cold, then, with cracked hands that ached from weekday work, they started campfires. No one ever thanked him. (Hayden 1-5) No one ever thanked his father, including himself, and regrets and remorse eat away at the poem...... middle of paper ...... a poem of his father would never have been written. Since he didn't care about his father in his youth, he wouldn't have cared about his "changed" drunk father, so he wouldn't have been affected much by it. As for the poet of “La Valse de mon papa”, he deserves the father like that of “These winter Sundays”. Because the poet was such a loving and caring child, having a loving and caring father would have been perfect not only for the poet, but also for the father. If this poet had had a “changed” father, he would not have written such a poem. He would have had a much happier childhood because having a caring and loving father seemed to me, based on the poem, to be the only thing the child wanted. Works Cited Arp, Thomas R. and Greg Johnson. Perrine's Sound & Sense: An Introduction to Poetry. 13th ed. Boston: Cengage Learning, 2011. Print.