My papa’s waltz by Theodore Roethke
Well this poem is a bit weird and abusive. I read the poem a couple of times because I was in shock with the poem and what it was saying. I think it is about a father fighting with his child. The father is drunk and has a bad relationship with his family. The mother is not happy with the fact that her husband is drunk in front of their child and abusing him as well. We know she is unhappy by the sentence saying, “My mother’s countenance could not unfrown itself.” As the father and the child fight it says in the poem that, “we romped until the pans slid from the kitchen shelf” and it says, “But I hung on like death.” We know that this child is young because when he stands up against his father he comes up to his belt buckle. But his father is dirty, clumsy, and drunk as he takes his child off to bed and we know this because it says, “the whiskey on your breath could make a small boy dizzy …. Such waltzing was not easy” and “at every step you missed”. But I agree with Mary mostly I think we have the same views about this poem. We both think that the father is abusing the child and they have an unhealthy relationship and the mother is not happy about the relationship of the family.