Theodore Roethke was a highly acclaimed, award winning 20th century poet.  During his time as a poet he was awarded a Pulitzer Prize along with two National Book Awards, he’s regarded as one of the most accomplished and influential writers of his generation. Roethke, being a very talented writer knows how to use language in creative ways that most writers will never come close to. In one of Roethke’s more popular poem’s, “My Papa’s Waltz”, Roethke demonstrates this creativeness, the poet uses the viewpoint of a young boy to describe a night of “Waltzing” that took place between the little boy and his father. Except the little boy and his father aren’t actually dancing, Roethke uses both language and childhood innocence to hide the reality of the waltzing, a young boy being abused by his father, examples of this use of innocence and language take place in every stanza of the poem.  

The whiskey on your breath

Could make a small boy dizzy;

But I hung on like death:

Such waltzing was not easy.

Roethke’s poem is told from the point of a little boy recalling a moment in his childhood. From the get-go Roethke right off the bat uses the line, “The whiskey on your breath Could make a small boy dizzy” (line 1), from the very first line of the poem the Author wants to get across the point that this man is clearly intoxicated, to the extent that the fragrance was so potent that it made his own son dizzy.  This line shines light onto what the rest of the poem is about at its root, a drunken man abusing his son. Many fathers drink, many fathers get drunk, but to use this particular line as your introduction in this particular poem, the poet wants the first thing in the reader’s mind to be that this boy’s father is drunk. This statement directly affects the way the reader portrays the father’s actions.  Roethke uses the innocence of his voice as a child to hide what is actually going on, because in truth, the kid doesn’t know what is actually going on, he thinks this is normal behavior between father and son, the boy just plainly doesn’t know any better.   

We romped until the pans

Slid from the kitchen shelf;

My mother’s countenance

Could not unfrown itself.

“We romped until the pans Slid from the kitchen shelf” (line 5), left alone this statement would likely be received as a positive one, a happy memory.  Roethke uses “Romped” to continue the illusion of this sort of “Waltz” that this boy and his father are partaking in.  But when read in context, the very next line happens to be “My mother’s countenance Could not unfrown itself.”, any mother would be upset if all of her pans in the kitchen were knocked off the shelf, except this mother wasn’t upset, she was downright sad, in fact Roethke makes it a point to state that her “countenance Could not unfrown itself”.  Why make a point, in a story that otherwise seems to have a positive tone, to clarify that in this room, with this little boy and his drunk father, the mother is also present and is not partaking in the waltzing but is looking on, with a facial expression depicting sadness? The mother does not share the same innocence as a child, the mother is fully mature and aware of the reality that she is in, and she doesn’t like it. 

Poems are a lot different than novels, while both are works consisting of words that are linked together to portray a particular type message, poems are a lot shorter and more structured, a single word or phrase carries a lot more weight towards the overall message in a poem than in a novel.  Novels are descriptive, they help paint a picture of a story. Poems are also descriptive, but are more selective of what they are descriptive about.  Stanza 3 highlights the importance of word selection and reads as follows: 

The hand that held my wrist

Was battered on one knuckle;

At every step you missed

My right ear scraped a buckle.

Roethke’s first description about the father’s physical appearance took place in the lines “The hand that held my wrist was battered on one knuckle” (line 10).  The author chose to use the knuckle of the father as one of the only two parts of this man deemed worthy of a literary description, and this particular knuckle is illustrated as battered.  The knuckle is the part of the human body that is more times than not most associated with combat and violence.  Even when stepping into the mind of the little kid that the writer is using to tell this poem, in this memory the boy did not remember his father’s face the most, or his eyes, or his glasses, not even his hand itself.  While recalling this child hood memory of the “Waltz” that this boy and his father would participate in, the little boy remembers his father’s battered knuckle more than he remembers anything else about his dad that night. 

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 final stanza of the poem begins as “You beat time on my head, with a palm caked hard by dirt”, Roethke uses the two simple words “time on” to dissuade the reader from trying to perceive any wrong doing or foul play on the part of the father, but when “time on” is  removed from the text it then reads quite literally “You beat my head, with a palm caked hard by dirt”.  Removing the words “time on” turns the stanza on its head. It shifts from a statement that can be interpreted as a father raising his kid and moving him along on the spectrum of time, to a father beating his kid with a hard palm.  Once again, the choice of wording in a poem is very specific and deliberate process, particular words are used to represent particular things. The choice of the word “beat” in the first line of the last stanza is very specific and deliberate. When read closely, the first three stanzas already hint at the possibility that this father is beating his child.  After creating this suspicion in the first three stanzas, Roethke uses the actual word “beat”, to describe an action performed on the boy by his father. However, the boy continues to display his innocence, he can’t comprehend the evil in his father’s actions, he believes this is how children are raised, all the boy knows is that he loves his father. This love combined with the child’s innocence and lack of maturity are all reasons why the father in the story appears to be doing nothing wrong, it’s the way the boy perceives it.

“My Papa’s Waltz” is riddled with words that are usually tied to violence and abuse.  But these words true meanings are hidden under the innocence of the child. By telling the story from the point of view of the child Roethke distracts the reader from the abuse and evil that is taking place.  Roethke takes the obliviousness of the child and uses it to turn the abuse into a dance, which is what the child thinks him and his father are actually doing. In “My Papa’s Waltz”, Roethke demonstrates this creativeness, the poet uses the viewpoint of a young boy to describe a night of “Waltzing” that took place between the little boy and his father. Except the little boy and his father aren’t actually dancing, Roethke uses both language and childhood innocence to hide the reality of the waltzing, a young boy being abused by his father, examples of this use of innocence and language take place in every stanza of the poem.  

 