Theodore roethke biography my papas waltz
My Papa's Waltz
Poem by Theodore Roethke
"My Papa's Waltz" is a poem written by Theodore Roethke. The poem was first published during 1942 in Hearst Magazine and later in other collections, including the 1948 anthologyThe Lost Son and Other Poems.
The poem takes place sometime during the poet's childhood and features a boy who loves his father, but is afraid of him. The boy is waltzing with his father, who is drunk and described as having battered knuckles and dirty palms. "My Papa's Waltz" deals with themes of family, relationships, confliction, fear, and love. Like other pieces written by Roethke, "My Papa's Waltz" draws from the poet's relationship with his father. "My Papa's Waltz" is considered to be one of Roethke's best works. It fits into the wider context of Roethke's work due to the role the father plays in the narrative.
The last line of the poem, "Still clinging to your shirt", indicates that the waltz and events that transpired had happened before and would happen again, reinforcing that the boy loves his father, despite the way he is treated.
Background and origin
Roethke began writing poetry while in high school, and began his attempt at approaching poetry more seriously while in graduate school at the University of Michigan. Years before the publication of "My Papa's Waltz", Roethke began suffering from manic depression and was hospitalized in 1935. Roethke continued to struggle with his bipolar disorder for the entirety of his career.
Roethke is believed to have begun "My Papa's Waltz" in 1941. The poem was first published in Hearst Magazine in 1942.
Themes and tone
Since its publication critics have provided varying interpretations of "My Papa's Waltz." Most critics note that the poem is a tug of war between love and fear. Karl Malkoff asserts that the musical meter of "My Papa's Waltz" conveys the boy's combined admiration and fear, and the father's affect
My Papa’s Waltz
Theodore Roethke 1948
Author Biography
Poem Summary
Themes
Style
Historical Context
Critical Overview
Criticism
Sources
For Further Study
“My Papa’s Waltz” was first published in 1948 in The Lost Son and Other Poems, a collection in which Roethke traces his growth from childhood to maturity. Outwardly, it is a simple poem: four quatrains of alternating rhyme recalling an incident from childhood. But this simplicity belies Roethke’s complex interweaving of disparate emotions and moods. A fond reminiscence of a comic dance of a father and his son, it is also a critique of the father’s coarseness and drunkenness.
Roethke’s relationship to his father appears to have been a complicated one. A German immigrant who ran a successful floral business, Otto Roethke was a demanding parent who required perfection of the son who idolized him. When the elder Roethke died of cancer when his son was in high school, the boy appears to have been left with many unresolved and conflicting emotions about his father. “My Papa’s Waltz” seems in some respects to be an attempt on Roethke’s part to come to terms with his feelings. In the poem, the father appears as a god-like giant to his son. (The boy’s ear comes up only to the father’s belt buckle.) He comes across as a figure of misrule, drunk, “romping,” disrupting his wife’s kitchen, unable to follow the steps of the dance. While such a figure has its comic aspects, it has a threatening side as well. The boy is clearly overwhelmed; he is made “dizzy” by his father and hangs onto him “like death.” He is injured, scraped by the father’s buckle. The mother looks on with disapproval. We get no sense, though, that the boy sides with his mother. Despite the coarseness of the father’s antics, at the end of the poem the boy remains “Still clinging” to his father. Moreover, Roethke subtly offers some justification for the father’s behavior by pointing out his battered knuckle and dirt-caked hands. These details
Fig. 1 -Nature is often personified to reflect human feelings and characteristics in Roethke's poetry.
Theodore Roethke: Biography
The depth of Roethke's poetry can be traced back to his struggles with self-esteem, grief, and manic depression. Despite all these hardships, he became a renowned and respected poetry professor and a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet who inspired many.
Theodore Roethke's Early Life
Theodore Roethke was born in Saginaw, Michigan, on May 25, 1908. His father, Otto, was a German immigrant to America who ran 25 acres worth of greenhouses with his brother. The family ran a floral company in Michigan and many of Roethke's poems were influenced by the time he spent in these greenhouses as a child.
However, Rotheke's childhood was not entirely idyllic. The American poet's father died from cancer, and his uncle committed suicide when he was only 14. Roethke was a well-read, intelligent teen, who showed a unique talent for writing from an early age, but he suffered greatly from grief and low self-esteem.
Theodore Roethke's Education and Teaching Career
Theodore Roethke received his Bachelor's and Master's in English from the University of Michigan. Here, he began writing poetry and exploring his profound love for nature through language. In the 1930s, Roethke learned the craft of poetry by imitating an array of poets he admired, including W.H. Auden, Louise Bogan, Wiliam Carlos Williams, William Wordsworth, William Blake, Walt Whitman, W.B. Yeats, T.S. Eliot, and Dante.
Theodore Roethke's first poetry book, Open House (1941), was perceived as being highly imitative. However, Open House was praised for transforming feelings of humiliation into poetry, lending insight into Roethke's depth and potential as a poet.
Roethke graduated with his Master's in 1936, briefly attend the University of Michigan School of Law, and then Harvard Law School. At Harvard, Roethke began an apprenticeship under the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet and En A story contained in sixteen short lines of poetry – that is Theodore Roethke’s “My Papa’s Waltz.” This autobiographical poem tells of a little boy dancing with his drunk father as his frowning mother looks on. How to read this poem? Is the speaker a man looking back at his drunken father with affection or remembering the fear he felt at his father’s whiskey binges? Love and fear simultaneously? There is mixed, conflicted affection in the poem. The boy hangs on “like death” and acknowledges that “such waltzing was not easy.” But he also mentions “[t]he hand that held my wrist” and says that his father “waltzed me off to bed / Still clinging to your shirt.” Despite the intimacy, however, it’s impossible not to notice the hard, nearly brutal images in the poem. The father dances around the room so roughly that pans slide off the kitchen shelf. The father’s hand is “battered.” The boy’s ear “scrape[s]” his father’s belt buckle. The father “beat[s] time on my head / With a palm caked hard by dirt.” These images hint of domestic violence – the father toward the boy or the father toward the mother, perhaps both. However you read this poem, it is a poem of great intimacy – the grown man looking back at what passed for a close moment with his father. While it’s undeniable that the poem reveals the harsh side of the speaker’s father, the poem also reveals a tenderness between the father and the boy, the affection (if conflicted) the boy feels for the father. Even the boy himself seems to wonder how he was supposed to feel. He’s “dizzy” – a state that can be good or bad. And he says, “Such waltzing was not easy.” As he dances a fragile dance between his father and his mother, he hangs on like death, clings to his father as best he can. The title of the volume in which the poem appears – The Lost Son – may give us a clue as to how to read the poem, whether a fond remembrance of affection or a terrifying memory o Theodore Roethke: “My Papa’s Waltz”