"My Papa's Waltz" by Theodore Roethke

           “My Papa’s Waltz” by Theodore Roethke is a poem that may have to be read a few times to be understood. Even then it is still a little unclear as to what is actually happening in the poem. It is about a father who comes home after a hard day’s work a little drunken up and is waltzing or dancing with his son. In the first stanza the narrator uses words that rhyme such as “breath” and “death” and “dizzy” and “easy”. I believe that it is no coincidence that he uses words like this to express his childhood. Theodore Roethke’s father died of a heart attack when Theodore was only fifteen years old. Fifteen is a hard age for a boy to lose a father, especially just starting high school. I think Theodore is reminiscing back to the times he had with his father and those were his most prized and memorable moments.

            The second stanza is one that kind of stood out to me. Lines 5 through 8 say “We romped until the pans Slid from the kitchen shelf; My mother’s countenance Could not unfrown itself.” When I read this at first it seemed to me like the father was dancing with his son. Instead he was coming home drunk and throwing him around the kitchen and beating him up. The reason I thought this was because the mother’s facial expressions were sad ones. But after reading it again I came to the realization that the mother may just be sad because that is the only time the father spends with the boy, and he’s drunk when he is doing it. Or she could be in “aw” because she sees the father and son’s waltzing as being very sweet.

            In the last two stanzas a couple of different lines stood out; the first one being about the battered hand that the father had. This again led me to believe that the father had been beating his child, but in fact he wasn’t. His hands and knuckles were beat up from his job. And when it says “At every step you missed My ear scraped a buckle,” that is not the father whooping his child with a belt. That is merely showing the height difference between the father and son. Another interesting line in the last stanza was when he said, “You beat time on my head With a palm caked hard by dirt.” This again makes it believeable that the father is beating his child, but the palm caked hard by dirt again reflects the hard work that is being done during the day by the father. And when he says you beat time on my head he may be referring to the “beat time” of the music and the father tapping him on the head as they waltz.

            I liked this poem because it was very real and made a person think a lot. Roethke confused the readers by making them think that the father was just a drunk and coming home and beating up his child. But as it turns out the father is expressing his love for the child by dancing with him after he’s had a little whiskey.