Love is a Waltz

Parents. Just thinking about them creates a waltz with nostalgia. Reminiscing about childhood memories, be it that family vacation to the far off land, dinner at six, Dad coming home from work, even that time spent in the bedroom after doing something stupid can easily invoke that warm fuzzy feeling inside. That is exactly the feeling that Roethke captures in his poem “My Papa’s Waltz.” In the poem, Roethke uses word choice, rhyme scheme and tone to emphasize the unconditional love felt for ones father.

Before getting into exactly how Roethke creates his waltz, it is first important to discuss the time in which it was written. “My Papa’s Waltz” is not a modern poem, it was instead written in the 1940’s. As such, the full understanding of this poem cannot be reached without first coming to terms with the fact that life was different back then. Mom stayed at home, raised the children and cleaned; while Dad was the bread winner. It was the father’s job to provide for the family, and the father in the poem clearly did as evident in lines nine and ten “The hand that held my wrist / Was battered on one knuckle; “. Without this understanding of the timeframe in which the poem was written, some of what’s said can be easily misconstrued as child abuse or neglectful parenting. Lines one and two are a perfect example of this: “The whiskey on your breath / Could make a small boy dizzy;” as without the knowledge that in the early 1900’s it was very common, and not looked down upon, for a laborer to work all day then stop by the bar before heading home, it would appear that the father was neglectful when this is not the case.

Knowing the pretext makes the theme of the poem become much clearer. Rather than a lamentation of his father’s drinking problem, lines one and two take on a whole new meaning. It instead becomes the loving memory of a boy who races to see his father as soon as he walks in the door. This becomes even more apparent when word choice comes into play. Words like “romp”, “cling”, “waltz”, and even the use of “papa” rather than father or dad, all imply a happy time. There are some negative words such as “death”, “scrape”, “beat” however in the way that they’re used, they’re not negative at all. For example, “But I hung on like death.” (Line 3) shows a son holding his father really closely, never wanting to let go. Later in the poem the “scrape” is caused by a belt buckle (Line 12) which again shows a really tight hug. In line thirteen, “You beat time on my head” doesn’t mean the father is beating the son, but rather tapping to the beat of the music. Now, Roethke did use these words for a reason. The alternating good and bad connotations create a real waltz like tone, and they also show how the father isn’t perfect but the son loves him anyway—unconditionally.

The tone of the poem is also very important in determining the theme as Roethke uses many tools to affect the flow and feel of the poem. First, he uses an ABAB rhyme scheme, which creates a verbal sway, a back and forth, like a waltz. He mixes in different rhyme patterns to add to this effect, rather than just using all one syllable rhymes (breath/death, for example) he also uses two syllable rhymes (dizzy/easy). Combine those with the alternating good and bad connotations mentioned before, and the poem reads like a happy waltz. If the poem was about anything other than happy childhood memories, then the tone would have been much different. It would have sounded harsh, or mellow, not happy. Certainly not waltz like.

                Just like in the father, there are some imperfections in the waltz-like tone.  For one, Roethke uses mostly six syllable lines, but occasionally, a line will have seven syllables. A great example of this is in line twelve “My right ear scraped a buckle.”, another example is in line two “Could make a small boy dizzy;” and interestingly both of these lines contain some of the more negative words of the poem. This is no mistake, because that pattern continues with line ten, a line that contains battered. Roethke does this on purpose; he does it to show that while nothing is perfect it doesn’t matter when it’s family. This is proven by the fact that while the pattern of six syllable lines is broken, it doesn’t have any bearing on the overall happy waltz-like tone of the poem just as while there are some bad times or negative words, they don’t have any real bearing on how unconditional a child’s love is.

Everyone loves their parents, even if they’re not perfect. Roethke would definitely agree with this statement, as evident by his poem “My Papa’s Waltz”. Be it through his use of alternating good and bad connotations, his ABAB waltz like rhyme scheme, his use of the slight mistakes in his poems layout, or just the happy tone, Roethke makes it perfectly clear how he feels about a parent child relationship.

Affection is a Waltz

Things were very different in the early-to-mid-1900s. The family dynamic of the time was much different than the family dynamic of today. Virtually every family at that time was a single income family—the father was the bread winner, while the mother stayed at home to raise the children. This very traditional lifestyle made inter-family relationships unlike what they are today. In My Papa's Waltz, Roethke uses an ABAB rhyme scheme combined with alternating good and bad connotations to create a tone that exemplifies a father-son relationship in the earlier half the 1900s.

To fully understand My Papa’s Waltz, it’s important to remember that this poem wasn’t written today. It isn’t a modern poem. This is important because without reading it in the proper context, it may seem like a poem about child abuse. This simply isn’t the case. When read in the context of the time that it was written, it shows a much more loving family. Without knowing that it was very common of the time for a father to work all day, every day, and then go to the bar and have some whiskey before coming home, lines one and two “The whiskey on your breath / could make a small boy dizzy” could come across very negatively. The key component in identifying that the speaker in this poem enjoys the time he spends with his father is the tone.

Roethke writes this poem in a way that almost sounds like a verbal drunken-waltz when read aloud. He accomplishes this with a skillful use of an ABAB rhyme scheme, which creates a sense of verbal swaying, much like that of a waltz. Instead of using strictly one syllable rhymes, like breath/death and shirt/dirt, he adds some two syllable rhymes as well such as dizzy and easy, which really embodies the back and forth swaying of a waltz. The number of syllables in each line is another clear indicator of an imperfect waltz—almost every line has six syllables but there are a few with seven. These lines show the stumbling (or miss stepping) of the tipsy father.

Another significant way that Roethke creates the tipsy tone is through the use of words with good and bad connotations. There are many words in this poem that might push the reader towards a feeling of child abuse, such as “death,” “unfrown,” “beat” and “scraped” their positioning with words of good connotation neutralizes and overcomes the bad connotations that these words carry. Saying “But I hung on like death:” (line 3) implies that he doesn’t want to let go of his father while they romp around the kitchen. There are two other lines that have the same implications. “My right ear scraped a buckle” (Line 12) shows that the speaker is hanging on so tight, that his ear is up against his father’s belt buckle, a clear sign of affection. Roethke even ends the poem with another similar line “Still clinging to your shirt” (Line 16). Had there been any abuse or any implications that the speaker didn’t enjoy the time with his father, after all of that, he wouldn’t have been still clinging. Romp is another word with a good connotation. Romping, which is defined as to frolic or to play boisterously by Princeton, would never be used to describe something that wasn’t enjoyable.

The tone of My Papa’s Waltz paints a vivid picture of a son who enjoys spending every possible second with his father. Papa (which is a much more loving pronoun than say, father) comes home from late at night from work, a little drunk. The speaker can smell the whiskey on his breath, but doesn’t care. He instead gives his dad a big hug and they begin to romp or play around. Their waltzing knocks a few pans off the shelves, and the mother gives a frown, but does nothing to stop the playful dancing of father and son. The playing eventually ends and Papa brings the child to bed where the child doesn’t want to let go. Without the proper tone, this poem could have been easily taken is a much darker sense. Did he really beat the kid on the head, or was he keeping a drum beat? The reader knows that it was a playful encounter between a loving father and son because of the tone Roethke creates using the rhyme scheme and alternating connotations.