my papas waltz Essays (977 words) - Guggenheim Fellows, Poetry

Treasured Moments ?My Papa?s Waltz? is a poem written by Theodore Roethke, whom portrays the speaker as a young boy with his father. In the poem, the speaker describes a night where his drunken father is taking him for a dance around the kitchen, a waltz of sorts. Roethke intends to portray the relationship between the son and his father by describing an event in which he remembers very vividly. I think that Roethke portrays that the speaker holds this event closely to his heart, as he uses this event to describe the relationship between father and son. The importance of this relationship relates to the year this poem was written. In the 1940s, children very rarely got to see their father because they were always working while the mothers stayed home tending to the cooking, cleaning, and children. Therefore any time they were able to spend with their fathers were cherished. As we begin to read the poem, we become aware of the scene and tone for the poem set up by Roethke. The first stanza is where we find out that the father is drunk or has been drinking. Roethke uses the line ?The whiskey on your breath/Could make a small boy dizzy.? So we now know that the father has been drinking and the son is aware of it. We also find out that the father and son are dancing. Even with the drinking and smell of whiskey, the son wants to partake in the dancing, could be a dangerous thing to do because drinking can impair balance and stability. Roethke uses the line ?But I hung on like death:?which shows that maybe the son was clinging onto his father so tightly was because he felt his father losing balance and stumbling. The decrease in the father?s balance is shown again in the second stanza of the poem, which shows the scope of the rough housing and dancing that the father and son are partaking in. They are romping around in the kitchen, knocking pots and pans over which could be cause of his drinking and why the mother is frowning at them. I think this stanza shows the importance of the waltz that the two are having. ?We romped until the pans/Slid from the kitchen shelf;/My mother?s countenance/Could not unfrown itself.?, which shows that regardless of what?s going to happen, even if they are going to knock pots and pans over or even if his wife is frowning at him, that the father is going to continue waltzing with his son. It also shows how much he enjoys spending time with his son, even if he has been drinking, he just thinks of how much fun he is having with his son that rarely occurs due to his work schedule. The third stanza of the poem gives us a detail about the father which actually gives us much more insight into the life of the father. Roethke uses the line ?The hand that held my wrist/Was battered on one knuckle;? I think what Roethke was trying to show here was that his father was a working man. Not one that sat behind a desk or a phone, but rather on that used his hands for work, physical manual labor. When I think of this, I think it shows in better detail the relationship between the father and the son. The father works all day out in the field or factory, and after he gets home he wants to relax by having some whiskey and dancing with his son. Also, Roethke talks about every time that his father missed a step, his ear would scrape his belt buckle, showing the closeness of the two of them, literally holding onto each other as they rumble around in the kitchen. However his remembrances of feeling his father?s belt buckle makes you realize that this time spent with his father is so dear to him that he practically remembers it like it was yesterday. As the poem comes to an end, it does in fact prove the father had been at work. This is shown with the line ?You beat time on my head/With a palm caked hard by dirt,? illustrating that the father in