Lines 1-2
The first order of business in a poem is to establish situation and mood, and Roethke selects the father’s drinking as the foremost fact to be conveyed. The tone is slightly comic, as the speaker suggests that there was enough alcohol on the father’s breath to inebriate a child. This observation implies that the father had consumed a substantial amount of whiskey, since the smell of it was very potent. These lines also establish a closeness between the two figures. The poem is a direct address from the son to the father, evoking a feeling of intimacy between them.
Line 3
The sense of closeness is further emphasized in this line. Here it is physical closeness, as the child is said to have clutched onto his father. The description “like death” introduces a note of fear or perhaps desperation. A grip “like death” is extremely tenacious, indicating that the person holding on greatly fears the consequences of letting go. The figure is derived from a personification of death as someone who, once he has grasped onto a person, never lets go. The situation here, then, is quite complex. On the one hand, the boy was afraid of letting go of his father, perhaps fearing he would be hurt by his drunken careening. Or perhaps he feared being separated from his father emotionally. He feared a loss of intimacy with his father if he let go, if he didn’t participate in the dance. The dance thus serves as a metaphor for the overall relationship between father and son: intimate and vitally important for the boy, but also dizzying and anxiety provoking. On the other hand, the description of the boy hanging onto his father “like death” also evokes the image of a death-figure clutching the man. This is particularly resonant if we consider that Roethke’s father died when Roethke himself was still a boy.
Line 4
This line contains the first mention, outside of the poem’s title, of the waltz. This is the initial indication that the father and son were dancing. Only after clearly establishing the complexity of the father-son relationship does Roethke provide the poem’s circumstance, its central event. The meaning of the word “waltz,” however, is ambiguous here. The waltz is a simple dance, not difficult to perform. In fact, the expression “to waltz” means to do something effortlessly, as in, “The team waltzed through to the finals.” (This will be a secondary meaning of the word when it appears in line 15.) In this line, though, we are told that waltzing with the father was, paradoxically, difficult. What should have been easy was hard. On one level, this suggests that the father’s inebriation made it a challenge for the boy to dance with him. This picture of a small boy trying to match steps with his drunken father is lightly comic. On the metaphorical level of the dance as representing the entire father-son relationship, this line suggests that the relationship was difficult, that the boy found it hard to keep “in synch” with his father. Or perhaps he felt that he could not — to use another figure of speech derived from dancing — “follow his father’s lead,” could not do what his father did, could not follow the example his father had set.
Lines 5-6
These two lines reveal the boisterousness of the dancing, which seems at odds with the grace of a waltz. Increasingly, the use of the term “waltz” to describe the father’s behavior seems ironic. The verb “romped” carries connotations of exuberance and unruliness, and the vigorousness of the dancing caused kitchen utensils to fall from the shelf. However, “romped” also suggests fun, playfulness, and — significantly — ease of achievement. In this sense, “romp” is synonymous with “waltz.” One could just as well say, “The team romped through to the finals” as say they “waltzed through.”
Lines: 7-8
The mother is introduced into the scene as a rather aloof, disapproving figure. She did not engage in the dancing, and her frowning face indicates that was displeased by it. Curiously, the speaker of the poem addresses the father directly (evoking, as we noted above, a feeling of intimacy), but he refers to the mother with the comparatively impersonal “My mother.” Moreover, he refers not to her whole person but to just her face (“countenance”). This figure of speech in which a part is used to stand for the whole (as in “all hands on deck,” meaning the entire sailors, not just their hands) is called synecdoche. In a synecdoche, the essential aspects of the part is used to characterize the whole. In these lines, the essential aspect of the face is a frown, which characterizes the mother very negatively. A further effect of the synecdoche is to depersonalize the mother: she is one big frown that is referred to with the impersonal pronoun “it” (in “itself”). The brusque dismissal of the mother in two lines stands in marked contrast to the poem’s lingering examination of the father.
Lines: 9-12
Even though the boy and his father have been close throughout the poem, they seem especially so in this stanza. The father’s hand held his son’s wrist. The man’s actions had direct consequences for the boy (his missed steps caused the boy’s ear to be scraped), as if the two were joined. Both figures were injured, the father on his knuckle, the son on his ear. These hurts introduce a note of pain. The father apparently received his from his labor, but the son’s injury was directly caused by his dancing with — his relationship with — his father.
Lines: 13-14
The picture of the father’s hand, hardened by toil, recalls the image of the other one in lines 9-10. This hand kept rhythm on the boy’s head in an odd little gesture, as if he meant, as the colloquial expression goes, to drive it into his son’s brain. The insistent, Morse Code-like tapping seems intended to convey to the boy how the dance was supposed to go, not how it actually did go (with its clumsiness and missed steps). The father-son relationship should have been smooth and easy but in reality was awkward and stumbling.
Lines: 15-16
On the surface these concluding lines impart a breezy finality, almost a flourish, to the proceedings. Literally, they danced from the kitchen to the bedroom, but, in addition, the connotation of ease associated with the word “waltz” suggests that the father “whisked” his son off to bed. However, the image of the boy “Still clinging” to his father has a plaintive quality. Maybe he still felt fearful of his father’s rambunctiousness. Or maybe he held on because he didn’t want the dance (or the relationship) to end. If we recall the earlier suggestion of the father’s death, perhaps we can read the final line as indicating the son didn’t want to be separated from his father by death. In the end, he simply found it difficult to let his father go.
Media Adaptations
- Kunitz, Stanley, On Theodore Roethke, 1 cassette, New York: Jeffrey Norton Publishing, 1966. Poet Kunitz talks about his friend Roethke’s life and character, especially his lyrical gifts and passion to succeed.
- In a Dark Time, motion picture, San Francisco State College Poetry Center, Contemporary Films/McGraw-Hill. Roethke imparts his views on the sources and functions of poetry and his approach to writing. He reads to illustrate his belief in confessional poetry and discusses his life. Set in his home.
- Untitled, 2 tapes, Seattle: University of Washington Health Science Auditorium, 1959. Humorous, informal reading with comments on poems read, including “My Papa’s Waltz.”
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