In “My Papa’s Waltz”, American poet Theodore Roethke transforms the horrid experience of a child being beaten by his father into the romantic and beautiful dance of a waltz. Written in trecet iambs to imitate the relaxing beat of the waltz, the poet installs some sense of pleasure in the reader. In doing so, Roethke makes the subject of a beating more readable and lessening the effect of the drunkenness makes the speaker’s father more forgivable. The lucidity of diction and imagery throughout Roethke’s poem distracts from the underlying dark metaphor of a son being beaten by his drunk father to a graceful waltz.
Despite the dulcet cadence of the poem’s syntax, Roethke’s diction in certain lines of the poem disrupt the idealist dance that a son and father are participating in. With its simple ABAB rhyme scheme and trecet iambs, the true action of the poem is often lost among the sing-song quality of the lines; the rhythm almost acts as background music for the waltzing son and father. Themes of adoration and love are portrayed when the son “hung on” to his father (Roethke l. 3), implying that he appreciated the time he spent with his. The full line, however, states that the son “hung on like death”, which changes the tone of the poem from something that is cheerful to something that is violent and grim. This tone continues in the second stanza as they “romped until the pans/ Slid from the kitchen shelf” (ll. 5-6); these words used together create a scene of tumult and cacophony. The diction used in the poem creates a tone that can be rendered as both…
Roethke perfectly captures the speaker’s innocence and confusion through his utilization of both sanguine and somber diction and imagery paired with the poem’s melodious rhyme scheme and…
