My Papa’s Waltz
The whiskey on your breath Could make a small boy dizzy; But I hung on like death: Such waltzing was not easy. We romped until the pans Slid from the kitchen shelf; My mother’s countenance Could not unfrown itself. The hand that held my wrist Was battered on one knuckle; At every step you missed My right ear scraped a buckle. You beat time on my head With a palm caked hard by dirt, Then waltzed me off to bed Still clinging to your shirt. Why am I including this poem? I included this poem because I think this poem is really meaningful and interesting. It tells us how the writer feels when writing this poem, and the skills of writing had made us know how the writer think about his father. |
Analyzing "My Papa's Waltz"
Theodore Roethke wrote my Papa’s Waltz. “My Papa’s Waltz” depicts a scene set in the mid-20s. This poem is about life. It is about a boy’s relationship with his alcoholic father. It is about how this boy expressed his feelings on how his father treated his family and him when Theodore was a child. The purpose of writing this poem is to portray how he feels and how he thinks about his father. He is trying to communicate with his father. He is trying to communicate with his father by writing a poem about how he was during his childhood. This is a sad and emotional poem because the writer wrote about those sad memories from the past. The writer is disappointed and upset while he is writing this poem because he thought of every moment from the past. His childhood was imprinted upon his senses like colours lay upon silk. This poem rhymes at the end of each sentence, eg: ‘wrist…missed’, ‘knuckle…buckle’ etc. This poem contained simile, eg: ‘But I hung on like death’, Irony: The whiskey on your breath…. But I hung on like death: Such waltzing was not easy… We romped until the pans, Slid from the kitchen shelf, Alliteration: The hand that held my wrist, was battered on the knuckle. This poem flows when reading. This poem is a conventional poem that follows a pattern. It is a quadrate poem and the meter of each sentence in the poem is similar. In this poem, the writer used high-level vocabulary that made the poem meaningful and informative. |