"My Papa's Waltz" by Theodore Roethke.

The whiskey on your breath

Could make a small boy dizzy;

But I hung on like death:

Such waltzing was not easy.

We romped until the pans

Slid from the kitchen shelf;

My mother's countenance

Could not unfrown itself.

The hand that held my wrist

Was battered on one knuckle;

At every step you missed

My right ear scraped a buckle.

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 poem, "My Papa's Waltz", written by Theodore Roethke, is written in such a way that creates many debate and contestation over the intended message and tone. Many interpret see, the poem as joyous and loving; others, including myself, view it with disgust and pity. The boy in this poem expresses his feelings toward his relationship between his father and himself. He possesses an attitude, which gives an example of the poet's ironic tone.

The poetic language and poem structure create on the whole an explicit image, which assists in denoting the ideal significance of the poem.

From the style of the poem, we can see that the speaker is an older man who is reflecting back on his childhood. The poem describes an incident when his father arrives home drunk and apparently in a state of abuse. "The whiskey on your breath Could make a small boy dizzy; But I hung on like death: Such waltzing was not easy." The speaker is referring to the word "waltz" to the act of mistreatment. Several words and phrases in the poem confirm this. For example, words such as "battered", "scraped", "beat", and phrases including "But I hung on like death", and "My right ear scraped a buckle", are example of this connotation. In addition, the phrase,