My Papa's Waltz by Theodore Roethke

Theodore Roethke was born in Saginaw, Michigan during the early nineteen hundreds.  Roethke's father was a German immigrant who owned and worked on a 25-acre field.  In his teens, Theodore Roethke decided to enroll at the University of Michigan, where he received his MA and BA.  Later, he became in touch with nature, and ended up writing about its beauty and complexity many times.  Today, many people believe Theodore Roethke to be the greatest American poet, including James Dickey.

My Papa’s Waltz

By Theodore Roethke 1908–1963 Theodore Roethke

The whiskey on your breath   

Could make a small boy dizzy;   

But I hung on like death:   

Such waltzing was not easy.

We romped until the pans   

Slid from the kitchen shelf;   

My mother’s countenance   

Could not unfrown itself.

The hand that held my wrist   

Was battered on one knuckle;   

At every step you missed

My right ear scraped a buckle.

You beat time on my head   

With a palm caked hard by dirt,   

Then waltzed me off to bed   

Still clinging to your shirt.

 

The poem My Papa's Waltz by Theodore Roethke describes the loving relationship between a hard working father and his son through his contrast of positive and negative diction.  The first stanza begins with the father drinking a little whiskey while teaching his son how to waltz.  Although some people become angry when they are drunk, the father in this poem becomes loving and caring, as he teaches his son to dance.  The following stanza mentions the dancers "romped until the pans slid from the kitchen shelf."  This stanza shows the two having a little too much fun, because they end up knocking pans over, resulting in the mother's disapproval of the rough play. 

                Although the majority of the poem portrays the scene positively, the third stanza begins with the son noticing the "battered knuckle" of his father.  This relates to Roethke's father because his father was a German immigrant labor worker.  Therefore, his hands where probably rough and battered because of the rough work he constantly performed.  Therefore, the son in the poem is saddened by his father's depressing daily life.  Because the father does not want his son to endure the same life struggles, he tries to teach the son about the real world.  One lesson was that life is not fair.  He teaches this when the father missed the step, but the boy's ear was scraped by the buckle.  The father also "beat time" on the son's head "with a palm caked hard by dirt" to teach the boy that there is only so much time to succeed, and if he missed the opportunity, the boy would encounter the same life struggles.  However, no matter how hard the father is on his son, he will always waltz in love with him.