 “My Papas Waltz” uses negative words and phrases to show the abusive relationship between the father and his family in order to convey sorrowful emotions in the reader.  “The whiskey on your breath could make a small boy dizzy” has many examples of this idea.  Firstly, generally whiskey on someone’s breath has a negative connotation, especially on the breath of a father.  This gives the reader a feeling of irresponsibility, and fear for the family this father belongs to.  This line continues to mention how a small boy would be made dizzy by the breath of the father.  This will make the reader assume there is a small boy present in the poem, which will illustrate the hopelessness of the situation.  The use of the word “dizzy” is the authors attempt to revel to the reader the severity of the father’s drunkenness. 

“But I hung on like death” is a very important line, because this is the point in the poem the reader knows that this is an abusive scenario.  The reader learns from this line that the boy in the poem is hanging on to his father for his life, illustrating to the reader the fear the boy must be facing.  The line “such waltzing was not easy.” Acts as an explanation for the previous line, emphasizing the difficultly the child is facing, and giving the reader a shocking image of a child clutching to his drunk father. The author uses the word “death” to describe how the child is clinging to his father.  This emphasizes how horrified the boy is, and how violently the father must be tossing the boy around.  This strikes fear in the reader, seeing how the boy can be so terrified from his own father.

This image is enhanced with the word “romped,” emitting and insuring a feeling of hostility and violence.    The whole line reads: “we romped until the pans slid from the kitchen shelf,” illustrating a brutish image of the father with his son.  The author mentions the pans sliding off of the kitchen shelf to give imagery to the abusive situation. The author specifically uses the word “slid” to describe how the pans fell off the shelf.  This can lead the reader to believe that the father is tossing the child onto the kitchen counter. Also, by mentioning a kitchen, the author is hinting that this “waltz” is taking place in multiple rooms.  This leaves the reader to imagine the father drunkenly dragging his son from room to room, giving one a heavy with sadness and empathy for the child.  

The first mention of another person in this poem is in line seven, reveling the mother of the boy who is being attacked by the father.  The line reads: “my mother’s countenance could not unfrown itself.” The mother appears to not be acting, but not out of apathy for her child’s wellbeing, but because she’s so afraid of her husband. This will inform the reader of how serious the situation is. The use of the word “unfrown” is interesting, for it seems like frowning is an inflammatory reaction to the sight of her own child being abused.  This will ultimately lead the reader to believe that this underwhelmed reaction is a hint to the fact that this isn’t the first time this has happened.

“The hand that held my wrist was battered on one knuckle” is one of the two most violent lines in this poem.  The “battered knuckle” confirms to the reader that the father probably had a night of bar fights, conveying him to be an aggressive drunk.  This leaves the reader to wonder of the origins of the battered knuckle.  The author draws attention to the father holding the wrist of his son.  This illustrates the powerlessness the child has in this “waltz” by being literally shackled to his father, and forced to participate in his destructive dance. 

In line eleven, the use of the word “missed” is interesting.  The full line reads “at every step you missed,” leaving the reader an image of a stumbling drunk, tossing his child around with his own body weight. This image is made clearer as the poem continues with “my right ear scraped a buckle.”  This draws attention to how young the child might be.  It becomes clear to the reader that the child is as tall as his father’s belt buckle, showing how cruel the situation is. 

The line “you beat time on my head with a palm caked hard by dirt” illustrates to the reader that the father has been out for a long time, and can assume that he has come home late at night.  The author hints that the father may have been out on the street, falling down on the grass making himself dirty. This could be because he was kicked out of the bar he was getting drunk in, and had to walk home in his drunken stupor, or he could have been driving while drunk, and crashed his car. An interesting phrase used in this poem is: “you beat time on my head.” The author is implying that the father is wearing a watch on the wrist of the hand that he’s beating his son with, adding to the trauma of the blows. The image of a child being beaten by his drunk father will leave one with deep heartache.  

The phrase “off to bed” is interestingly used at the end of the poem.  It can literally mean the father put his child to bed, but in the context of this poem, the reader can assume the child was knocked out during the violent waltz being forced on the child.  The evidence for this theory is in the line prior to the last, explaining how the father “beat time” over the child’s head.  This will assure the reader that the situation the child is in is a hopeless one, leaving the reader an upsetting image of child abuse from a drunk father.  
