To Fear, or to Love?

      How fitting that this poem is a poetic waltz itself. It's rhythm is iambic trimester, giving a dance feeling as one reads it as one might feel while waltzing. It's rhyme is every other line, ABAB pattern, tying together each line and stanza rather than pairing them off.
      As Roethke begins with:

The whiskey on your breath   

Could make a small boy dizzy;   

But I hung on like death:   

Such waltzing was not easy.

     we are introduced to "papa", and alcoholic even whilst Roethke was still young. When the author goes to say

"But I hung on like death:   

Such waltzing was not easy. "

we realize that this waltz could also be the dance of life or of two separate lives intertwined. Living with his alcoholic father was not easy, so his dance of life became difficult to handle very early in his childhood.

     When he says:

We romped until the pans   

Slid from the kitchen shelf;   

   

    the word choice of "romp" lightens the tone from the grim thought of little Roethke and his scary father to having fun sometimes. It wasn't so solemn as a waltz of life, but lively enough a dance to romp around at this point in the poem.

  

        From this point, we can tell that Papa perhaps has good days but sometimes he slips and things aren't so great after a night with the bottle. In mentioning his mother, we see how she frowned at their romping in her kitchen. She is perhaps depicted as someone who frowns upon fun and when times get bad, she is no help at all.

     With Roethke's choice of phrases and words, it is almost as if he wants us to picture an abusive relationship between him and his father. However, as the picture shows, the same words and phrases can depict a lighthearted dance at the end of the day. He is a small enough child that the line "My right ear scraped a buckle" makes sense if they are dancing or having Papa swing him around.

         Another example of strange wording but a double meaning is this stanza:

You beat time on my head   

With a palm caked hard by dirt,   

Then waltzed me off to bed   

Still clinging to your shirt.

With the word "beat" one might assume a beating of abuse. But when we see the next three lines, we realize that perhaps "pat" would have been a better word. Roethke you're confusing us! The imagery of "a palm caked hard by dirt," can show papa is hardworking, but not well off enough so he must do physical labor jobs to get by. Perhaps the stress of not having enough to feed his family at the end of the day leads to his drinking problem, even though he truly cares about his family. In the end Papa is a man that cares, but also must be feared. He is loving, but also scary. Since Roethke's father died when he was still young. maybe he wanted to remember him in a positive light, but also held onto the wrong he caused him. Either way, this poem in intriguing with how it causes the reader to think about what Roethke truly means.