My Papa's Waltz

749 Words3 Pages
Poetry is an art form which includes combination of words, images and thoughts that can be convert to combine the reader’s understanding of the poem with their personal thoughts and experience. In My Papa’s Waltz by Theodore Roethke, the drill outline can be used to analyze this poem. Roethke uses the figures of speech as well as devices of sound to describe the relationship of son with his father who is drunk and waltzing. The poem consists of four stanzas with four lines each. The first two stanzas of the poem explain the waltzing of father with his son and the last two stanzas describe the father’s terror as well as his hard work in his life. Like all poetry intends, I have used my experience to analyze this poem in order to interpret the way Roethke describe the relationship between father and son. The figures of speech and the devices of sound that a poet uses is critical for the poem’s mental images. Roethke uses six syllables in each of the sixteen lines to create a constant rhythm. It is an iambic trimeter form and a verse form of rhymed verse. The rhyme scheme of the poem is expressed as [ababcdcd...] which is an end rhyme. The “Waltz” in the title of poem is an example metaphor and gives the idea what the poem is about. Lines such as “But I hung on like death…” (line 3) and “The hand that held my wrist…” (line 9) contains an alliteration of the “h” sound. The poem is full of examples of slant rhyme which is spread throughout the poem. The “whisky” and “breath” in line one, and in line ten, “battered” and “knuckle” have the same “uh” sound. The “dizzy” in second line and “easy” in forth line have the “zyy” sound. The poem contains a different forms of figurative language to emphasis put upon the meaning of poem. Roethke is discussing the relationship
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