NOTE: Free essay sample provided on this page should be used for references or sample purposes only. The sample essay is available to anyone, so any direct quoting without mentioning the source will be considered plagiarism by schools, colleges and universities that use plagiarism detection software. To get a completely brand-new, plagiarism-free essay, please use our essay writing service.
One click instant price quote
My Papas Waltz Confessional in spirit, viewing mass as a transforming for, Thodor Roethke's poetry xplor's th dates of th slf, attempting to archive wholeness through destruction. His vrs is find-crafts, full of stunning imag's and chant-lik rhythms, which cho th poetry of T. S. list and William But Yats. From his Modrnist masters, along with othr's such as Grand Manly Hopkins, Roethke land to find objects in natur which crystallized his policy motions.
He drew upon his early childhood in Michigan, where his father owned one of the largest and most beautiful greenhouses in the state -- thus his work is rich in natural imagery of the garden. The luxuriant plant life of his father's greenhouses symbolized for Roethke both abundant life and death -- often the wet soil and the curling garden slugs became associated with decay and loss of self, while flowers could spark a mystical sense of oneness in the poet. At the center of Roethke's universe -- as well as his garden -- was his father, a rough and stern man of Prussian descent who often grew irate at his son's delicate nature. The death of the father engendered enormous guilt in his teenage son, and the shadow of the father loomed over Roethke as he experienced nervous breakdowns, perhaps courting madness in attempts to exorcise his inner demons. The aloof and cold father, whose love was never expressed openly, created in the young poet feelings of inadequacy, as well as contradictory desires to reconcile with the father and to flee his burdening memory. Roethke's "My Papa's Waltz" captures in dramatic fashion his relationship to his father.
In the poem, whiskey has loosened Otto Roethke's stern demeanor, demolishing his habitual aloofness and moral severity. Thus the poem describes an exhilarating, as well as frightening, moment of union with the father, who has become a drunken whirlwind in the kitchen. Roethke's poetic style captures the movement of the dance, as his iambic tetrameter suggests the rhythm of waltz time, and the initial stanzas portray the child's mixture of terror and excitement. The first stanza is powerful in its directness and final understatement -- "The whiskey of your breath / Could make a small boy dizzy; / But I hung on like death: / Such waltzing was not easy" -- while the second stanza masterfully suggests a powerful ambiguity in his response: he looks this mother for help, but seems to censure her for her inability to transcend her Puritan moralist: "My mother's countenance / Could not unknown itself. " Thus the mother is subtly portrayed by Roethke as both a refuge, a source of protection from the father's violence, and as repressive force.
With the utmost poetic economy the third and fourth stanzas offer a portrait of his father rich in contradictions - by focusing on his hands, injured from working in the garden, Roethke demonstrates how he was drawn to the earthiness and the power of his father, and by careful use of parallelism the father becomes almost a force of nature in himself, inflicting wounds upon the son: "The hand that held my wrist / Was battered on one knuckle; / At every step you missed / My right ear scraped a buckle. " For Roethke, a father's love is bound up with ideas of punishment. Terror is mixed with admiration. Th final stanza also abounds in poetic contradiction: Roethke seems to acknowledge that his poetic gifts were inherited from his father at the same time as he recognizes the violence inflicted upon him: "You beat time on my head / With a palm caked hard by dirt. " Roethke's culminating lines end with a compelling image of his father's authoritarian nature -- when he carries the child off to bed, one senses that his decision was not negotiable and the child's needs were not paramount: "Then waltzed me off to bed / Still clinging to your shirt. " But Roethke's final image also possesses a remarkable vulnerability, an aspect that lends the memory of his father a haunting quality, a tenderness that somewhat softens the portrait that preceded it.
Free research essays on topics related to: garden, father's, roethke, poetic, roethke's
Research essay sample on Father Roethke Roethkes
