The poem is about a story from a young boy playing “Waltz” (a dance) with his father a very tender age in the Kitchen. The poem start with narrator (the boy) complaining the harsh smell of whisky from his father, “The whiskey on your breath could make a small boy dizzy (Roethke).” It was so intense that it could make someone feel a bit woozy. This means that the father was a failure because he was drinking so much, but the narrator had no regrets; he enjoyed the dance anyway. The use of metaphor, “But I hung on like death,” is used metaphorically in the poem to depict great love, so deep that only death can separate (Roethke).
The narrator tells the story retrospectively as an adult and is reflecting his early childhood with his father. The poem
...indicates that the father was a drunkard and a poor man from the narrator analysis of his father’s palm, “With a palm caked hard by dirt (Roethke).” The dance was very rigorous and the narrator gives the feeling that although it was a happy dance with his father he was sometimes afraid. The third stanza indicates how his father held his wrist, until his ear scraped a buckle. This gives a feeling that the dance was intense to a point where he endured some pain. The fourth stanza indicates that, “Then waltzed me off to bed Still clinging to your shirt (Roethke).”
The narrator used metaphor here to show that even if the dance was so rough, he still clung to his father even when he was very sleepy. Another imagery that shows that the dance was rough bu
the boy eyed is when his mother met them playing, “My mother’s countenance could not unfrown itself (Roethke).” The expression from his mother shows that he was a bit upset from the romp, but did not express any disdain. This could simply mean that although sometimes he considered the play risky because it was happening in the kitchen when his husband was very drunk, she knew that she could not stop it because it was making the boy happy.
Works Cited
- Roethke, Theodore, and William De Witt Snodgrass. My papa's waltz. Bluestem Press, College of Saint Benedict, 2001.
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