Poem Analysis: My Papa's Waltz

Chris Shea

ENG 298

Professor Aimee Pozorski

04/28/15

From a traditional surface reading, one would believe that Theodore Roethke’s 1948 poem My Papa’s Waltz could be seen as simply a father and child playing and dancing together. However, if one were to read more closely, the poem takes a much darker turn. One would then realize that the poem isn’t as much about playing as it is about drunken abuse. Reading it this way, one could see how the words, descriptions, and rhythm can come together to paint such a picture.

First, let’s tackle the literal descriptions of the verses. The first verse goes as follows:

The whiskey on your breath / Could make a small boy busy; / But I hung on like death: / Such waltzing was not easy. (“My Papa’s Waltz”

1-4)
The first two lines mean what they say and say what they mean: the father is incredibly drunk. And although the reasons why he drank so much whiskey to make himself drunk are all up to speculation, needless to say the amount of alcohol he ingests could be considered alcohol abuse.
And as for the second two lines, they pertain to the child who he is interacting with. Referring to hanging on “like death” (Roethke, line 3) however, this definitely pertains to child abuse. And it seems as though the child may think s/he could die during this encounter. As for the fourth line, it’s not just pertaining to the difficulty of the ‘waltz’ in hand. It’s actually another sign of abuse during the poem. The pain and grit of child abuse can easily fold into something being considered ‘hard’ or ‘high difficulty’ for the child in question.
Now the second verse goes as follows:
We romped until the pans / Slid from the kitchen shelf; / My mother’s countenance / Could not unfrown itself. (“My Papa’s Waltz” 5-8)
The first two lines in this verse pertain to the abuse being so violent that it’s not only being afflicted to the child. It’s also causing damage to the house and breaking the pans in the kitchen. But the most important lines of this verse are the last two. These pertain to the mother’s reaction to what is happening.
The mother is not pleased with what her husband is doing to her son and her home, which reinforces the situation of the ‘waltz’ actually being an episode of child abuse.

In other words, the mother does not support the father’s actions towards the child. And he will have a lot of explaining to do when this is all over.

The third verse goes as follows:

The hand that held my wrist / Was battered on one knuckle; / At every step you missed, / My right ear scraped a buckle. (“My Papa’s Waltz” 9-12)

The first two lines of this verse pertain to the number of times this abuse has occurred. This was clearly not the first time this man was involved in abusing his child. Therefore, it reveals how abusive the father really is, especially with the use of the onomatopoeic word ‘battered’ to describe the condition of the hand.

The third line of the verse reassures the readers that the father is indeed drunk, as missing steps while walking is a common sign of drunkenness (cops use this when performing a field sobriety test). And as for the fourth and final line of this verse, this is the most obvious sign of abuse in the poem up to this point, as the author uses yet another onomatopoeic word (this one being ‘scrape’) to describe what is happening to the child at this moment.

And the fourth and final verse goes as

follows:
You beat time on my head / With a palm caked hard by dirt, / Then waltzed me off to bed / Still clinging to your shirt. (“My Papa’s Waltz” 13-16)
The first line of this verse uses yet another onomatopoeic word, this one being ‘beat’. And it says that time is being beaten onto this child’s head. This is yet another obvious sign of abuse in this poem. The second line describes the weapon being used in this assault. And it’s described as being “…caked hard by dirt.” (Roethke, line 14). Although where the dirt came from is mostly up to speculation, it could be due to the fact that the father may work at a construction zone or other physical labor field. And not only that, but it’s possible that he could be very frustrated with the job; so now we may have a motive for his abusive behavior towards both alcohol and his child.
And as for the final two lines of the poem, the third describes the end of the period of abuse as the father essentially throwing his child into bed; and the fourth paints the picture of the father having let go of the child apparently in midair and the child clinging onto the father’s shirt because s/he doesn’t want to fall and hurt him/herself. A frightful image indeed.
Now that one can understand the meanings of each verse through close reading, it is now time to transfer to the rhythm and structure of the poem and its verses and lines. This poem is in iambic tritameter, which is three beats of unaccented-accented syllables per line. This is very consistent with the waltz style of dance, as a waltz is three beats per measure in music. So each line could count as a measure in a waltz.
And as for the musical phrases of this poem, each verse is in four lines. This means that there are three parts of the poem where one musical phrase ends and another one begins. And this is where important measure numbers (or rehearsal numbers) can come in. In this case, the numbers that would be written in large blocks above their respective measures would be 5, 9, and 13. These would be the measure numbers where musicians would refer to when practicing or rehearsing the waltz.
As for the number of syllables per line of the poem, this is also an interesting application to the concept. Per verse and line, they go as follows:
6, 7, 6, 7…6, 6, 6, 6…6, 7, 6, 7…6, 7, 6, 6.
What could be the reason for such an odd and inconsistent rhythm? Perhaps it’s supposed to reinforce the father’s drunkenness during the poem itself. The syllable count seems to try to stay around 6 but tends to stumble towards 7, similarly to how a drunk person seems to stumble around when trying to walk. As can be seen above, the poem has 11 lines where the syllable count is 6 and has 5 lines where the syllable count is 7. So therefore, the abuse the child is encountering seems more evidently to be alcohol-related.
On the surface (or traditional reading), Theodore Roethke’s 1948 poem My Papa’s Waltz seems to be just a happy image of a father and child dancing together through the house. However, a closer reading tends to paint a darker picture to this scene. Reading it this way with all the evidence presented in this essay, one can see the harsh reality of a child being drunkenly abused by his/her father, and how his/her mother reacts to the abuse of her child at the hands of his/her father. In other words, the father really needs to attend an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting.
Work Cited:
Roethke, Theodore. My Papa’s Waltz. Understanding Poetry. Walter Kalaidjian. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2005. 127. Print.