Blog #12

"My Papa’s Waltz”

Theodore Roethke

When I first read the title of the poem I immediately thought that this poem was about someone speaking over their dad. When I read the poem that is exactly what it sounded like, the lines of the poem insist to me that the speaker's dad makes the whole family unhappy. In the third stanza of the poem, the speaker says "The hand that held my wrist Was battered on one knuckle", and this tells that the father is in a way abusive to their family also. The first line of the poem that reads "The whiskey on your breath Could make a small boy dizzy" immediately shows that the father has been drinking.  It also insists that since the boy was a young child, he had to deal with an alcoholic father.  He confesses that "such a waltzing was not easy" and that he "hung on like death". At the same time, there was a moment of resistance and there was also surrender. The boy had to just take in the smell of his father's breath. The poem uses a simile, "like death", to make an implication that he thought this father's wild actions would never come to an end and this was something he had to deal with for a while.

 At a young age, he realized that it was no easy feat having to deal with an alcoholic. “Could make a small boy dizzy” may imply the persona’s noteworthy strength, but it is also suggestive of the boy’s respect and fear for his father’s patriarchy.