Poetry Craft Lesson:

Deepening : Interpretations of “My Papa’s Waltz”

http://poetry.suite101.com/blog.cfm/misreading_my_papas_waltz

Misreading 'My Papa's Waltz'

No Alcoholism, No Child Abuse, Only Romping Affection
© Linda Sue Grimes / Dec 18, 2006

Alcoholism and child abuse are in the mind of the misreader, not in the poem that romps,
waltzes, and dramatizes the roughhousing affection between father and son.
Theodore Roethke’s “My Papa’s Waltz” has been misread even by well-educated
professionals. Jeff Greenberg, Professor of Psychology at the University of Arizona, offers a
typical example of the misreading Roethke’s innocent drama of father and son
roughhousing. In the professor’s lecture, titled “The impact of violence on our children: Some
insights from Becker and the cinema,” he states the following which introduces Roethke’s
poem: “Perhaps most uniquely disturbing is when our security base turns on us, conveying
inconsistent values and unpredictable behaviors, and inflicting emotional and physical pain;
how then does a child sustain equanimity? Even if brutal and deeply disturbed, the parent is
typically still the only basis of security the child knows. Theodore Roethke expresses this
problem eloquently.”
The professor could not be further from the truth, but fortunately, he says no more about
the poem, allowing his mischaracterization to say it all. Contrary to the Professor Greenberg’s
misreading, Theodore Roethke’s poem expresses love between a father and son in a
roughhousing session that the adult speaker in the poem looking back chooses to
metaphorically dramatize as a “waltz.” If the event portrayed in the poem resulted in
“emotional and physical pain,” it is unlikely that the adult speaker would have allowed his
readers to interpret the event as a special time when the father and son “romped until the
pans / Slid from the kitchen shelf,” and then the father “waltzed me [the son] off to bed /
Still clinging to your [the father’s] shirt.”
“Romped” is too playful a word for an emotionally and physically traumatized adult to use
in looking back at a childhood event. And if the father were actually beating and abusing the
child in an alcoholic rage, the child would not be clinging the father’s shirt, he would be trying
to run away from him.
The time designations of the poem make it clear that the father and son did this kind of
“waltzing” often. It was not just one session that the speaker is recounting. Notice he says,
“Such waltzing was not easy.” The gerund “waltzing” signals that every time they engaged in
this “dance,” the son was challenged to keep up with the father’s movements. The child
enjoys this waltz not being easy, or else it would have become boring. The father challenged
the boy to keep up with him as they “romped” around the kitchen making those pans slide
off the shelf.
Also, if the session were one of abuse and beating by a drunken brute, the mother would
have taken a more active role than just frowning. The mother does not even speak, signaling
that she is only mildly annoyed by this masculine ritual. There are no indications that the
father is abusive to either the child or the mother or any other members of the family. The
poem reveals only a speaker who is an adult looking back at a playful time he spent with his
father. The alcohol breath, the dirty hands, the clumsy romping, and beating time on the
boy’s head are all just innocent challenging features that comprise the metaphor of the
waltz, that so impressed the boy that as an adult he dramatizes the event so we can enjoy
his challenging dance along with him and his family.
Poetry Craft Lesson:
Deepening : Interpretations of “My Papa’s Waltz”

http://edwardbyrne.blogspot.com/2007/06/theodore-roethke-my-papas-waltz.html

Each year as my students and I discuss twentieth-century poetry, I always can count
upon Theodore Roethke’s “My Papa’s Waltz” to inspire some of the most interesting
and conflicting opinions. Amazingly, examination of this fairly brief and seemingly
accessible work usually initiates an elaborate and occasionally emotional
conversation that moves beyond the poem’s clever use of rhythm and clear sense of
sound into the direction of animated debate about the possible presence of
messages covering child abuse and alcoholism.
Rather than reading the poetry as an elegiac tribute by a son to his father, perhaps
a belated statement of love by the speaker, many in my classes want to condemn the
father for his behavior, especially for the pain they perceive him inflicting upon the
young boy in the poem. A few also accuse the mother in the work of acting almost as
an accomplice because she witnesses the roughhousing without interfering to stop
her husband’s clumsy carousing.
When pressed for evidence of the violence they claim Roethke presents, particular
phrases or images are noted. The students begin by citing the opening two lines,
which certainly establish drunkenness. In addition, they declare the poem suggests
physical injuries to the small boy, whose ear is scraped by his father’s buckle and
who feels his father “beat” him. The mother obviously appears upset, the students
claim, and they wonder if the father’s battered knuckle resulted from a barroom
brawl. Finally, they conclude the first stanza’s allusion to death opens the poem for
darker, if not more ominous, interpretation.

When consulting with colleagues at my university and elsewhere, I find this response
to be a somewhat common reaction among growing numbers of students as well as
some scholars. Indeed, in the last couple of decades, as society’s awareness and
alarm over child abuse have increased, and concern over all forms of substance
abuse has become more prominent, one can understand why a legion of readers
might highlight these issues in their analysis of “My Papa’s Waltz.”
Nevertheless, I find myself repeatedly rising to the defense of the parents in the
poem, not so much for their specific actions or inactions, but because I believe we
also need to read the piece within the context of its time frame. In the era this poem
was authored, the late-1940s, readers would not have shared the same sensibilities
about these issues that contemporary readers exhibit. Certainly, the definition of
child abuse would not have been as broad as that expressed by my students, and a
man returning home with whiskey on his breath after a day of work would not
immediately raise great concern since it would not have been very unusual.
If we switch to a different time frame and another frame of mind for the persona in
the piece based upon the poet’s autobiography, we would retreat even further a few
decades to early in the twentieth century. Roethke was born in 1908 and could not
have been very old when the actions might have occurred since the boy’s height only
extends to his father’s waist, and that may be with him standing on his father’s shoe
tops. Also, we know the father’s work in a greenhouse would have explained the
battered knuckle and the caked dirt on his hands.
Poetry Craft Lesson:
Deepening : Interpretations of “My Papa’s Waltz”
Therefore, in the current interpretation of this poem by some readers, we see a
contrast between contemporary readers’ objections, responding within their own
perceptions of proper parenting, and the author’s apparent intention at honoring a
more pleasant memory of an enjoyable incident with his father, even if it “was not
easy.” After all, the poet refers to his father as “papa,” connoting greater affection.
Additionally, the word choice of “romp” reflects a more playful tone. The two dance a
carefree version of the upbeat waltz. Indeed, the poet’s use of “beat” pertains to the
father keeping the musical beat for their movements, and it possibly foreshadows the
poet’s own eventual understanding of rhythm as evidenced in the poem itself, which
mostly uses an iambic trimeter line to echo the musical beat in a waltz composition
and maybe imitate the swaying of waltzing dancers.
When we remember Theodore Roethke’s father died when the poet was only
fourteen, and that loss appeared to impact much of Roethke’s later life as well as his
writing, the mention of death seems even more elegiac. In fact, when we find similar
lines in the first and last stanzas (“I hung on like death” and “still clinging to your
shirt”), we may believe the father’s death is foreshadowed and that the son is
unwilling to let the father go despite possible pain, even decades later when Roethke
writes the poem.
In any case, one could contend the competing readings of this poem allow for a
richer and more rewarding experiencing of Roethke’s lyrical recollection, and the
conflicting conclusions help all conjure a more haunting image. As someone who
appreciates ambiguity in all forms of art, whether in a Roethke poem or the finale of
The Sopranos, I suggest “My Papa’s Waltz” for this Father’s Day weekend, and I
recommend an additional delight by listening to Theodore Roethke’s reading of the
poem.

Posted by Edward Byrne at Saturday, June 16, 2007

Poetry Craft Lesson:
Deepening : Interpretations of “My Papa’s Waltz”
Missed Steps: Images of Imbalance in Theodore Roethke's My Papa's Waltz
Poem Examines Father and Son Relationships

By A.S.M.

Just as society is distrustful of unchecked governmental power and mounting debt,

we fear imbalance in our personal lives. Imbalance doesn’t necessarily reflect a
physical state, but can also reflect a shift of power in a relationship. In Theodore
Roethke’s “My Papa’s Waltz”, the images of imbalance within the poem act as a
representation of the power on the father’s side in his relationship with his son and
his son’s reaction to his father’s actions. Traditionally, in a parent and child
relationship, the parent has the upper hand and guides, punishes and instructs the
child.

However, in the poem, the father and son share a somewhat unsteady relationship;
the son feels a closeness and love for his father despite his father’s mistreatment of
him. This constant struggle within the son’s mind puts their relationship into a
constant state of imbalance. By the end of the poem, the son succumbs to the father
and is forced to cling to his father’s shirt as he’s dragged off to bed. The images of
imbalance reflect this constant struggle between the father and son and ultimately
lead to the inescapable result of the child depending on his father.

Right from the start Roethke establishes images that suggest the father’s drunken
physical and mental state and the child’s equally unsteady reaction to his father. The
first two lines read, “The whiskey on your breath / Could make a small boy dizzy.”
Whiskey, a hard liquor, with the reputation of being a strong and unpredictable
substance mirrors the parent’s personality and establishes a powerful setting for the
poem. So powerful is the whiskey on the father’s breath that the young boy becomes
dizzy from his father’s breath alone. This not only creates an image of the child
unsteady on his feet, but also the child’s vulnerability in respect to his father’s tough
exterior.

However, the speaker does not choose a strong word to emphasize the child’s
helplessness. Instead, the speaker says that the “whiskey on (his father’s) breath
could make a small boy dizzy.” Emphasis on the word ‘could’ and the fact that the
statement is more uncertain and less extreme then replacing it with “makes” or
“makes me” dizzy, differentiates the speaker’s comment as less accusatory, and
instead more descriptive of the father’s physical state. The speaker doesn’t outright
accuse his father of being drunk, but instead says that his father’s physical state may
or may not be affecting him. This denial, in a way, shows that the speaker feels
enough love and affection for his father that he can over look such a problem as
drinking.

The child’s blameless perspective reinforces the notion of unconditional love

towards his father, even when their dance becomes particularly rough. In the second
stanza, the speaker describes the father and son relationship, or dance, in more
Poetry Craft Lesson:
Deepening : Interpretations of “My Papa’s Waltz”
playful terms by saying, “We romped until the pans/ Slid from the kitchen shelf.” The
use of the word romp, which more commonly means frolic or prance, characterizes
their movement around the room as horseplay or a game. However, the speaker does
say that their movement makes the pans slide from the kitchen shelf.

To make pans fall from a shelf, both must have moved quickly, heavily and violently
into the shelf. Even for horseplay, both actions seem particularly rough. The speaker,
in this case, possesses an innocent and loving perspective towards their somewhat
rough game. Once again, the speaker does not accuse his father of hurting him, and
divert emotion by lessening its severity.

The fact that the speaker avoids accusing the father further suggests that he will
love his father despite his actions and mistakes. In the third stanza, the speaker,
through personification, distances the blame from his father by stating, “At every step
you missed/ My right ear scraped a buckle.” The speaker continues to reinforce the
idea of the father and son sharing a dance. The reference to dancing comes through
the father’s missing a step, conveying the father’s clumsiness and lack of
gracefulness.

The image, also, places the father in a state of imbalance, suggesting that his step
seems to falter numerous times. The father shows vulnerability when he misses
steps, almost removing blame off of him when the buckle scratches the speaker’s
ear. In fact, the speaker, places the blame on his right ear through its personification.
By separating the belt from the father, Roethke separates any contact the father
makes with his son through his belt or his buckle, thus lessening the action’s
harshness.

The final two lines of the poem solidify that the father and son relationship remains
strong, despite the questionable and rough images of imbalance presented
throughout the poem. When the speaker says, “Then waltzed me off to bed/ Still
clinging to your shirt,” he is showing an imbalance within the relationship between
the father and the son. In this case, the father enforces his power because he
waltzes the son off to bed and the son is left clinging to his shirt.

The father and son take on traditional roles of the father putting the son to bed,
and the son clutching his father as he does so. However, in these lines, the use of the
word “clinging” emphasizes the dependency the child feels on the father. Clinging
strongly stresses the love that the speaker feels for his father. This concept of true,
unadulterated love emphasizes that although the father and son may not have the
most stable relationship, there still seems to be a great deal of love between them.

Although the child may love his father unconditionally he subtlety hints at his father’s
hurting him. However, this is done in such a way that the reader only notices the love
that exists between the two. In the line, “But I hung on like death,” the reader sees
how dependent and scared the child is of his father. The word “death” is very
powerful, especially in this context because it means that the child had to cling to his
father. The word, alone, means an end to life and is often viewed negatively.
Poetry Craft Lesson:
Deepening : Interpretations of “My Papa’s Waltz”
However, Roethke cuts this tension by immediately following that phrase with, “such
waltzing was not easy.”

In the reader’s mind, the dark, scary image is dulled by the beautiful image of
sharing a dance with one’s father. Roethke’s decision to downplay the harsh image
shows that although the child may fear his father, he will always love him, because
he isn’t always this harsh. The harsh images, followed by the more pleasant images
continue throughout the poem. For instance, in the last stanza, Roethke writes, “You
beat time on my head/ With a palm caked hard by dirt,/ Then waltzed me off to bed/
Still clinging to you shirt.”

The repetition of the harsh images of imbalance, specifically this one in which the
son is forced to cling to his father after being beat over the head, followed by an
image that is more pleasant has a profound effect on the reader, as well as the son.
He knows that at times his father may be harsh with him and it may cause him to fall
apart emotionally and physically, but in the end, his father will always do fatherly
things, such as “waltz(ing) (him) off to bed.”

Roethke highlights the moments of tenderness and makes the bond that exists
between the father and the son to come off as strong and ultimately caring. Through
the images of imbalance in “My Papa’s Waltz” the reader can see the father use his
power negatively in his relationship with his child, yet the child still always shows love
towards his parent. The reader also sees that, at times the child will show weakness
and be forced to cling to his shirt, thus reinforcing the idea that the child still loves
and trusts his father. It’s a prime example of the unconditional love a child feels for
his child.

2008 © Associated Content, All rights reserved.

Here are two more interpretations you can find online.

http://bcs.bedfordstmartins.com/Virtualit/poetry/critical_define/deconessay.pdf
(deconstructionist reading)

http://bcs.bedfordstmartins.com/Virtualit/poetry/critical_define/readrespessay.pdf
(reader response)