The Mood Of My Papa's Waltz By Theodore Roethke

Dissecting Papa and His Waltz

Theodore Roethke once proclaimed that “the darkness has its own light,” which seems ‘ato be a statement full of contradiction. Losing his father at a young age and suffering from depression throughout his later years, Roethke’s life was by no means easy. His poetry acted as his outlet and allowed him to see a smidgen of light, even though his life was encompassed by darkness (“Theodore Roethke”). Roethke’s poem “My Papa’s Waltz” is an extraordinary example of the light that Roethke was able to find amidst darkness. Roethke accentuated both love and loss through his word choice, the poem’s rhythm and by including figurative language.

Born in 1908, Roethke grew up in Saginaw, Michigan and spent much

of his time at his father’s twenty-five acre greenhouse. Roethke’s father and uncle both worked in the greenhouse and were both prominent male figures in Roethke’s life. Keeping up with the greenhouse required countless hours of rigorous work and Roethke would help his father and uncle when he was not at school. Surrounded by plant life throughout his childhood, Roethke developed an affinity for the wonders of nature. However, this innocent fascination with life was abruptly snuffed out when his beloved father lost his battle against cancer and his uncle committed suicide when Roethke was just fourteen. These traumatic events left young Roethke broken and forever changed. Later on in his life he attended and graduated from the University of Michigan and went on to do graduate work at Harvard. He taught at many different universities, including Michigan State University and Lafayette College. During his time at Michigan State, Roethke began to develop severe depression that greatly impacted his poetic works. It was during his teaching at Michigan State in 1942 when Roethke wrote his poem “My Papa’s Waltz.” His poem was initially published in a magazine and it later appeared in Roethke’s second book of poetry called The Lost Son: and Other Poems in 1948. Roethke admitted that “My Papa’s Waltz” was greatly influenced by the loss of his father when he was still a young boy. His position as a poetry teacher at the University of Washington was his final job. He taught poetry-writing there for fifteen years until he died in 1963. He was regarded as “the best poetry-writing teacher ever," by one of his students, Richard Hugo, who was later nominated twice for a Pulitzer (“Theodore Roethke”).
In the poem “My Papa’s Waltz,” Roethke‘s word choice paints a vivid picture of a young boy remembering a special moment he spent with his father. The poem uses the words “your” and “you” to show that the child in the poem is talking to his dad (Roethke 1, 11, 13, 16). There is never a point in the poem where the father responds to his child, making it seem as if the father is not physically with the child, but is only present in the child’s mind. The playfulness of the interaction between the father and son is displayed by words such as “dizzy,” “easy,” “romped,” and “waltzing” (2, 4, 5). These words create the lighthearted and goofy mood that shows the closeness of the loving father-son relationship. Although the child remembers his dad with admiration and love, the words “death,” “scraped,” and “beat” are harshly tied into the memory (3, 12, 13). This choice of words hints that even in these happy memories of dancing around the kitchen, sadness still creeps into the child’s mind. These words seem to suggest that the sadness of the memory is caused by the loss of the speaker’s father. The speaker remembers his father fondly, but misses him dearly as well. Roethke’s exceptional word choice helps the reader look deeper into the text to truly understand the meaning of poem.
The rhythm and structure of the poem help generate a feel for the physical waltz that the speaker is remembering. Much like the drunken father’s graceless waltz, the poem does not have a complicated, intricate structure to it. Most lines in the poem contain only six syllables, but occasionally a line will have seven syllables. These infrequent extra syllables that are tossed into the poem imitate the boy’s drunken father as he attempts to waltz but unintentionally misses a step to the dance every so often (11). The author’s use of this technique is a direct representation of his skills as an author. Even a detail as small as the rhythm of the poetry was taken into careful consideration and was used to create a masterpiece.
The figurative language that is used from the beginning to the end of “My Papa’s Waltz” is what truly makes the poem come to life in the reader’s mind.

The olfactory imagery in the first and second lines of the poem gives the reader an immediate sense of what the speaker smelled as he danced with his father. The father of the speaker has consumed so much whiskey that even the scent of his breath was enough to make the speaker dizzy as a young boy (1, 2). As the speaker waltzed with his intoxicated dad, he “hung on like death” simply to avoid being thrown off by his rambunctious father’s romping (3). Roethke uses a simile here to compare the boy clinging onto his father to death. By bringing in the morbidness associated with the word “death” so early on in the poem, Roethke creates a darkness that lingers behind the apparent happiness of the speaker’s memory. The visual imagery Roethke uses to describe the father’s hand that was “battered on one knuckle” and his palms that were “caked hard by dirt” gives the reader an idea that the father has come home from a long day of strenuous work (10, 14). After a hard day of physical labor, the father comes home to drink, but he also makes sure to spend time with his son before the day is over. This obvious effort that the father puts in to be with his son shows just how much he truly loves him. In the final two lines of the poem, Roethke wrote “Then waltzed me off to bed/ Still clinging to your shirt” (15, 16). The brilliant ending to this poem goes so much deeper than just a dad putting his child down to sleep for the night. The memory ends with the speaker clinging to his father’s shirt, like if he were to let go of his father, he may never see him again. Roethke’s concluding sentence of his poem makes the memory seem like a dream, and the child clings onto his father because he knows that it is nothing more than a dream. The child knows that when he wakes up from this dream he will be faced with the harsh reality

that he lost his father years ago. All the speaker wants is to have one more minute with the man that he loves and misses so much. He desires to be with his father, but the only place he can see him is in his mind, so he clings to those memories because they are all that he has left of his father.
Theodore Roethke’s poetry was greatly influenced by events that happened in his personal life. There is nowhere that specifically says that “My Papa’s Waltz” is Roethke himself remembering his own father that passed away, but the speaker in the poem and Roethke have a lot in common. While writing his poem, Roethke was probably able to connect with what he was writing which allowed him to pour his heart, soul, and mind into each and every word. This deep connection that he was able to feel, along with his extensive experience in poetry and literal arts, granted him the ability to craft such a beautiful poem. Theodore Roethke was able to find light in his memories of his father while writing “My Papa’s Waltz” and it allowed him to focus on something good from his life rather than dwelling on all the bad. Every person should strive to find the light in every situation, no matter how dark the darkness of the situation is.