My Papa’s Waltz: Summary & Analysis

"My Papa’s Waltz" is a poem written by the American poet Theodore Roethke that expresses the ambivalent feelings that he has toward his father as a child through the lens of a particular event. It describes the poet as a boy and his drunken father taking part in a waltz in the kitchen as a disapproving mother looks on.

The poem is nostalgic, sad, and ambivalent. It depicts a boy in a confused and possibly abusive relationship with a father trying in his own way to express affection toward his child. We don’t have enough information from the poem to determine the full nature of this relationship.

In this analysis of "My Papa's Waltz," I provide a rhetorical review of the poem to explain its nostalgic effect and rely on the biography of the author — Theodore Roethke — to contextualize the poem. 

Full text of the poem

Here is the full text 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.

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

“My Papa's Waltz" was written by Theodore Roethke and first published in 1942 in Hearst Magazine. It was later included in later collections, such as the poet’s 1948 collection, The Lost Son and Other Poems. 

Stanza by stanza analysis

The poem is made up of four quatrains (that is, stanzas with four lines). It has a simplistic ABAB rhyming scheme, and relies primarily on iambic trimeter in terms of rhythm. 

Let’s look at a stanza by stanza analysis of the poem. 

Stanza 1

The whiskey on your breath   

Could make a small boy dizzy;   

But I hung on like death:   

Such waltzing was not easy.

Here, the poet describes the terror from the perspective of a small boy dancing with a drunk father. He  seems to be describing the effects of second-hand drinking when he talks about getting dizzy from the smell  of whisky on his father’s breath. We get a sense of the terror when he says he hung on like death. 

Stanza 2

We romped until the pans   

Slid from the kitchen shelf;   

My mother’s countenance   

Could not unfrown itself.

The second stanza describes the effects of the dancing. It is slightly funny, showing how the rough romp led to pans sliding from the kitchen shelf and the mom looking on slightly upset. 

This is a shift from the first stanza where the mood is tense and scary. Here, it seems charming and fun. Boys being boys and having rough fun while mom disapproves. 

Stanza 3

The hand that held my wrist   

Was battered on one knuckle;   

At every step you missed

My right ear scraped a buckle.

Stanza 3 takes us back to the mood of tension and even terror from the perspective of a small boy. Dad is hurting both himself and his son as he dances. 

One of his knuckles is battered, presumably from scraping it against a chair, table, or counter while he dances. On the other hand, the boy’s ear is being repeatedly scraped against the dad’s belt buckle because of the drunken uncoordinated dancing. 

Stanza 4

You beat time on my head   

With a palm caked hard by dirt,   

Then waltzed me off to bed   

Still clinging to your shirt.

Stanza four explains how the waltz ends. It also sums up the mixed feelings associated with the dance. The poet explains how the dad used to beat time on his head, which would have not been pleasant and can even be described as abusive. 

However, he also described being danced all the way to bed, clinging to his dad’s shirt. This comes across as charming. Every young child would like the idea of being danced to bed by their dad, albeit without the drunkenness and abuse. 

Rhetorical analysis

The poem is relatively short and has few elaborate rhetorical or literary devices. This can be explained by the fact that the poem is written from the perspective of a “small boy.” Roethke is writing the poem as a grown man reflecting on his father. 

However, he occupies the point of view of his child self. This has an influence on the rhetoric quality of the poem. The rhetorical devices are simple. They include basic rhyme and meter and imagery. 

We should first mention how the rhyming pattern and regular rhythm mimics the dancing being described by the poet. The poem is written in iambic trimeter. This is a rather short meter. It emphasizes the dizzying speed or sensation of the event that the “small boy” is experiencing. 

In addition, the iambic trimeter pattern isn’t something that Roethke rigidly adheres to. We can see this in the first stanza: 

The whis- | key on | your breath   

Could make | a small | boy diz- | zy;   

But I | hung on | like death:   

 Such waltz- | ing was | not ea- | sy.

Lines 1 and 3 strictly follow the trimeter pattern, whereas there’s an extra beat at the ends of Lines 2 and 4. This off-beat rhythm reflects the turbulence of the dance and how easily the dad missed his steps while dancing. 

Imagery is a poetic device used in close association with perspective in the poem. The imagery used in the poem emphasizes the sensory perceptions and overload that the child experiences during this strange and drunken waltz. Roethke transports us into the experience from the viewpoint of a child, who is unable to process the event happening to him, but who registers all the vivid sensations that he experiences. 

The first stanza describes second-hand intoxication, with the poet describing the strong smell of whiskey and how it made him dizzy. Other remarkable sensory images include the description of the pain at the poet’s ear scraping the father’s belt buckle while dancing in the third stanza. 

In the same stanza, the poet describes seeing the battered knuckle of the dad on the “hand that held my wrist” (Line 5). The last stanza is also full of sensory detail. 

The poem describes the father’s palm as “caked hard by dirt” and also talks about “clinging to your shirt” as his dad dances him to bed. This imagery works well because it stays true to the perspective of a small child.

We can imagine the size difference between the father and the “small boy.” This size difference means that Roethke would be too short and too pressed against him to even see his dad’s face. Hence, there is no description of his dad’s face in the poem. 

He mentions his mom’s face “Could not unfrown itself" in Line 8. He likely caught a glimpse of her face glancing sideways while dancing with his dad. The entire poem is written from the cramped physical perspective of a small boy experiencing a confusing and traumatic event. In that light, the experience comes across as a boy encountering a friendly and well-meaning ogre, who nonetheless instills fear and anxiety in him.

The poet also makes use of assonance, that is, the repetition of close vowel sounds. He does so in the first stanza to highlight the effect of the "whiskey." This is achieved by repeating the long "e" vowel sound in words like "dizzy," "waltzing," and "easy." We also see assonance in the second stanza with the short vowel "o" sound in "romped," "from," and "unfrown."

Lastly, in the first line of Stanza 3, we have the use of alliteration, that is, the repetition of close consonant sounds. "The hand that held my wrist" repeats the "h" sound to give the impression of how tightly the boy's hand was being held by his dad. It also emphasizes the sense of helplessness at being trapped and abused.

The poet also employs a special form of alliteration known as sibilance. This refers to the constant repetition of close "s" sounds. This can be seen in the lines "We romped until the pans / Slid from the kitchen shelf" (Lines 5-6).

Themes in “My Papa’s Waltz”

An analysis of "My Papa's Waltz" reveals three major themes in the poem. The first revolves around nostalgia and the nature of memory, especially memory linked to trauma and loved ones. A second theme is the nature of father and son relationships. The third theme reflects the effects of suppressing emotions and affections toward loved ones. The speaker in the poem obviously loves his dad.

He turns a traumatic and somewhat abusive moment into one full of tenderness and a cherished nostalgic memory. This is simply the nature of memory and nostalgia, especially concerning those we love.

Even when our loved ones are objectively wrong in their conduct, nostalgia tends to portray them in a sympathetic and loving light. The poem by Rotheke captures this perfectly.

It does a good job of capturing the vulnerability, innocence, confusion, and affection that a young boy has for a well-meaning but slightly reckless and somewhat abusive father. 

The poet holds on to this memory of his dad in the same way that he remembers “Still clinging to your shirt” (Line 12). This is especially important considering that Roethke lost his dad at the young age of fourteen. 

Another theme is the nature of father-son relationships. In the kind of paternalistic and traditional German-American household that Roethke grew up in, fatherhood was not associated with affection and tenderness. Roethke's father found it hard to express his feelings toward his son.

This results in a kind of distorted communication of affection that is mediated via alcohol. The dad can only waltz with his son when he is drunk and beside himself. His sober self would likely do nothing as tender as dance with his son, as he lacked the capacity to show this side of himself.

The poem illustrates the danger of men or fathers suppressing or not showing affection to their sons because of the fear that it would violate the expectations of the gender roles that men have to fulfill.

This was one of the tragedies of Theodore Roethke's life. His father died when the poet was only fourteen. He never got a chance to reconcile these two sides of his father — the disciplinarian who could not express his tenderness and affection and the man with a capacity for the sensitivity and sentimentality that drove him to waltz his son to bed.

Perhaps, if his father had remained alive long enough for Theodore to grow old enough to question and communicate with him man to man, these contradictions would have been resolved.

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Biographical-historical context

The relationship between Roethke and his father can help explain the poem. His father — Otto Roethke —- was a German immigrant who owned and ran a greenhouse 25 acres in size. 

Theodore Roethke himself was born in Saginaw, Michigan. He was described as shy, sickly, and lacking in confidence while growing up. His relationship with his father, just as in the poem, was ambivalent.

The greenhouse was the family business and Theodore Roethke worked alongside his dad. This is what he had to say about working in the greenhouse: 

They were to me, I realize now, both heaven and hell, a kind of tropics created in the savage climate of Michigan, where austere German Americans turned their love of order and their terrifying efficiency into something beautiful.

The poet here is describing both the beauty of the greenhouse — a kind of tropical paradise that was able to exist in the cold climate of Michigan through the hard work of his father — and the joyless discipline that made it happen. 

His father was an authoritarian figure on the outside, but his work in the greenhouse revealed a kind of vulnerable sensitivity to nature. We can interpret “My Papa’s Waltz” in this light. 

Otto Roethke was a man who was stern and hard on the outside with a core of vulnerability in the inside, which he sought to not allow to surface. The drunken dance with his boy represents that suppressed vulnerable core being revealed.

His father could only express his softness and vulnerability through drink and the results were a mess, as we see in the poem. We see the intended affection of the dad. However, we also see the small, confused, and frightened boy not knowing what to make of it and hanging “on like death.”  

This strained relationship resulted in the poet having a rather unhappy life and childhood. We can see a hint or suggestion of this in another poem entitled "Root Cellar":

Nothing would sleep in that cellar, dank as a ditch,

Bulbs broke out of boxes hunting for chinks in the dark,

Shoots dangled and drooped,

Lolling obscenely from mildewed crates,

Hung down long yellow evil necks, like tropical snakes.

And what a congress of stinks!—

Roots ripe as old bait,

Pulpy stems, rank, silo-rich,

Leaf-mold, manure, lime, piled against slippery planks.

Nothing would give up life:

Even the dirt kept breathing a small breath.

This poem along with "My Papa's Waltz" is part of what is called the "Greenhouse Series." They are poems that tell about the life of the poet growing up as the son of a farmer who owned a greenhouse. The root cellar is a place where presumably plant seedlings would develop before being chosen for cultivation in the greenhouse.

It is described as an oppressive environment, as "dank as a ditch." The second line in particular is telling: "Bulbs broke out of boxes hunting for chinks in the dark." We can see this line and the poem as a whole as a metaphor for the poet's childhood and even this particular episode.

One could say that the poet's childhood was an overall negative and sad experience because of the broken relationship with a stern father who did not know how to properly express his love and affection for his son. In this light, "My Papa's Waltz" is an attempt at "hunting for chinks [of light] in the dark" by the poet.

This works on a second level as well. The dad's attempt to express his affection through a clumsy waltz can also be seen as a somewhat failed attempt to bridge the gap of affection between him and his son and finding chinks in the dark. So, the poem can be read as a homage to a dad who at least tried.

However, the poet doesn't romanticize the experience. Even as he tries to find something positive and tender in the relationship with his dad, he does an excellent job of telegraphing the fear, confusion, and ambivalence of the small boy that he was waltzing with his father.

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Cite this EminentEdit article

Antoine, M. (2025, April  30).  My Papa’s Waltz: Summary & Analysis. EminentEdit. https://www.eminentediting.com/post/my-papa-s-waltz-analysis