




When reading poems, what does a person look for first?  Do they look for a story?  Maybe they look for a rhyme scheme.  After all, poems have many different ways of influencing the reader, but what is the best way to influence somebody?  Writing style.  An author’s writing style can tell a lot about not only them, but their story and its meanings.  Writing styles are crucial to a story because depending on how they differ, they can allow for many different interpretations.  Two similar stories can be read and interpreted completely differently solely due to the author’s writing style.  In Theodore Roethke’s poem, My Papa’s Waltz, and Lucille Clifton’s poem, forgiving my father, both authors express their own unique writing styles, through the use of diction and characterization, in order to develop a melancholy and woeful tone.

In My Papa’s Waltz, Roethke uses specific diction to get a point across: having an alcoholic parent as a young child is not healthy for anybody.  From the very first stanza, we catch a glimpse of the story’s message and the author’s writing style.  “But I hung on like death: / Such waltzing was not easy” (Roethke 3-4).  These two lines explain how intensely the narrator is clinging onto his father, even though it may be difficult to do so.  The narrator loves his father so much that he is willing to hang onto him the way death hangs onto a grave after someone is buried.  Combining this with another quote from the poem, “Then waltzed me off to bed / Still clinging to your shirt”, we further realize the situation at hand and get a better idea of the narrator’s personality and character.  Even after all the bad stuff his father is doing, he is still clinging onto his shirt.  His choice of the word “clinging” rather than “grabbing” or “holding” helps the reader understand the true amount of obedience and loyalty the narrator has towards his father.  In the third stanza, the narrator says “The hand that held my wrist / Was battered on one knuckle” (Roethke 9-10).  Within these two lines, Roethke points us towards the idea that the father was beating somebody, either the narrator or his mother, with the same hand he was using to drag the narrator to bed.  His father is relentless and doesn’t care enough to even try to cover up his beaten-up knuckles when in front of his own kid.

Another way Roethke influences the reader is through his use of characterization.  We see an example of this in the very first two lines, “The whiskey on your breath / Could make a small boy dizzy” (Roethke 1-2).  These two lines give the reader an idea of who the father is as a person and as a father.  He drank so much whiskey that he could make a small boy slightly intoxicated from just breathing in his face.  The sheer amount of whiskey someone would need to drink in order to accomplish that shows the reader how much of a raging alcoholic the father is.  Roethke uses short and concise scenarios as a way of describing his characters.  Further into the poem there are the two lines, “My mother’s countenance / Could not unfrown itself” (Roethke 7-8).  These lines explain the mother’s feelings and character.  She is terrified.  She wouldn’t be able to stop frowning no matter how bad she wanted to.  We get a better idea of the father’s character with the lines, “We romped until the pans / Slid from the kitchen shelf” (Roethke 5-6).  The father was so wasted that he fought with his kid to point of knocking over pans, causing the mother’s feeling of sadness and her inability to stop frowning.

Lucille Clifton uses these same literary techniques in order to convey a sad message: it is the narrator’s father’s fault that she is the one paying for her mother’s medical bills and staying by her side so much.  We can see Clifton’s use of diction within the first stanza, “all week you have stood in my dreams / like a ghost, asking for more time” (Clifton 3-4).  These carefully selected and placed words give off a feeling of loneliness and distress.  The narrator is haunted by her father in her dreams as he asks for something that he will never be able to receive.  Clifton’s clever word placement and use of simile helps the read understand how much the father can’t get what he wants: time.  A ghost is dead and no matter how much they ask for more time alive, they won’t be able to obtain it because of the cold, hard fact that they are dead and will never be alive again.  Clifton is able to place strong emphasis on an idea because of her word choice and how she used the words.  Later in the poem we see these three lines, “you gave her all you had / which was nothing. you have already given her / all you had” (Clifton 14-16).  This is another example of Clifton putting a lot of emphasis on an idea by using specific word choice.  The father had nothing to give so even though he gave the mother everything, it was still nothing.  We see a darker tone through the line, “daddy old pauper old prisoner, old dead man” (Clifton 20).  The father is poor and a prisoner of death, unable to fix things if he wanted to.  The tone is dark because of the candor of the line.  Death is dark.  Being poor can be scary.  Being a prisoner can make someone go insane due to constant isolation.  The father is ultimately doomed and incapable of fixing his mistakes.

Clifton does a great job at fleshing out the characters by her use of characterization.  Towards the end of the first stanza we get an idea of who the mother is and who the daughter is.  “my mother’s hand opens in her early grave / and i hold it out like a good daughter” (Clifton 6-7).  The mother is dying and just wants to hold her daughter’s hand and her daughter does so because she knows that’s what the stereotypical daughter would do in the situation.  This shows how the daughter knows what she is able to do to help her dying mother, since her father left her with no money to support her mother.  Further in the poem we get a better idea of who the father is with the lines, “there is no more time for you. there will / never be time enough daddy daddy old lecher / old liar” (Clifton 8-10).  He has made some bad mistakes in his life.  Clifton’s use of the words “lecher” and “liar” concurrently craft the idea that the father may have slept around a bit in his time when he was married and lied about it.  He is no longer alive so he has no more time and will never have enough to fix his mistakes, or even apologize.  In the third stanza, we find out about the father’s fate and how the daughter truly feels about the situation of her mother dying.  “you were each other’s bad bargain, not mine. / daddy old pauper old prisoner, old dead man / what am i doing here collecting?” (Clifton 19-21).  The daughter is questioning why she is the one collecting money and paying for her mother’s medical bills when they were the ones who chose to marry each other, not her.  She is frustrated because she knows it wouldn’t be as difficult for her if her father was alive and able to pay the bills himself.  Clifton repeats the word “pauper” to emphasize the fact that even if the father was alive, he’d still be broke.  He still wouldn’t be able to immediately pay the medical bills.  He still wouldn’t be able to help his dying wife.

A writer has the ability to influence how a reader interprets or reacts to their story simply through the use of diction and characterization.  Depending on how they use these literary techniques, the story can say something completely different.  Roethke and Clifton clearly understand this idea and how to take advantage of these techniques to better their stories.  Their ability to use these techniques, sometimes in combination with each other, is why they are able to have their own unique writing styles and powerfully influence a reader’s opinion or interpretation of their story.





