Parent-Children Relationships: A Comparison of Peter Meinke and Robert Hayden's Poems Morgan Greenwade College

Peter Meinke’s poem “Advice to My Son” and Robert Hayden’s poem “Those Winter Sundays” should be compared because they are two beautifully written poems that are about relationships between a parent and their child, but they also have their differences. Peter Meinke’s “Advice to My Son” concludes with a statement that is a little more difficult to comprehend because it is riddled with figurative language and symbols. Hayden’s poem “Those Winter Sundays” uses language that is in a fairly straightforward and expresses one of the main themes in the last few lines. This difference in linguistic style will readily appear if you compare the concluding lines of each poem. Though these two heartfelt poems are different in many ways, in the end, they are both essentially about a loving family and the relationship that a father and son share.

Peter Meinke’s poem “Advice to My Son” is about a father trying to give his son his own age-old advice on how to spend his time and how to live his life to the fullest from the perspective of one who is older and more experienced. Meinke conveys a powerful sense of a series of the opposing aspects of life: the physical and the spiritual, the sensual and the intellectual, the religious and the...