Thanks, Oblivion. I love some of Roethke's poems. You did a banging, as my daughters say, job discussing the poem. It was interesting to me that one of your daughters felt the poem was violent and the other did not. If you listen to the man in the 'Favorite Poem' clip his feelings about the poem are simular to what you have written. However where he could not provide the support for his feelings, you hit it. I can add one more thing. Regarding the 3/4 watz time, you are not far off. The poem is written in iambic meter and the lines in the first stanza are as follows:oblivion wrote:Roethke is one of my favorite poets and "Papa" gets 4+ dings from me.
This one is always good for differing and having great discussions. One of my daughters finds it violent whilst the other one thinks it isn't.
Roethke's father died when he was pretty young and I see this poem as a declaration of love to a person who was obviously not a tame, gentle person, but nevertheless one who was hard-working and played--danced--with his small son. There is always quite a bit of focus on the "brutal" aspects, such as the drink, the scraping on the belt buckle, the pounding out time, etc. But I argue that through the eyes of a boy, here is his father, having a romp (=play) with him, whirling him around and off to bed.
He refers to this man as his papa, not his father. There is more distance in the word "father", a closeness in "papa". He certainly doesn't refer to his mother as "Mama".
The picture I see is of a man, after a hard day's work, having met his friends at a bar, comes home dirty, rather drunk, but pleased to see his son. Through the eyes of whiskey, he doesn't realize he's being a bit gruff, dances with the boy and brings him to bed. This is not the the picture of violence some see. I don't think the vocabulary used supports the idea of violence. I think of it as an ode to his dead father. And Roethke hangs on to this moment, frozen in time in his memory, like death...as in the poem.
Roethke is a poet who needs to be read for surface value, but also for introspection. And he tends to go from micro to macro. If you read this aloud, you find yourself slipping into 3/4 time (waltz) although granted, it is not explicitly written as such. The poem gathers momentum as it goes along, right up to the last line. Notice the lack of adjectives--this one is carried along on its verbs. A very dynamic poem.
3 iambs or feet long
3 1/2
3
3 1/2
Second stanz:
each are 3 feet long
Third:
3
3 1/2
3
3 1/2
And the fourth
each 3
This does give a feeling of waltzing (I think I hear another ding -- make that 4 for me). I think it mostly comes from leaving those second lines with that 1/2 iamb. The line closes with a non stressed word, just like the 1, 2, 3 rise of a waltz. I hope I didn't lose anyone; I may not be very good at explaining this.
I have 2 mother tongues, English and German, Penelope. Makes things a bit easier.
