example my papa's waltz

1. The whiskey on your breath
Could make a small boy dizzy;
But I hung on like death:
Such waltzing was not easy.
We romped until the pans
Slid from the kitchen shelf;
My mother’s countenance
Could not unfrown itself.
My Papa’s Waltz
The hand that held my wrist
Was battered on one knuckle;
At every step you missed
My right ear scraped a buckle
You beat time on my head
With a palm caked hard by dirt,
Then waltzed me off to bed
Still clinging to your shirt.
LET ME ASK YOU
Who is the speaker?
Who is the audience?

2. Analyzing Poetry
 Speaker
The person speaking in the poem may not be the
poet. It may be that the poet has created a
persona, or a person in the poem.
In “My Papa’s Waltz,” the speaker is the little boy
now grown up. We know this because he says in
the last stanza “you beat time on my head,” my
head telling us it is the speaker who is the boy.
However, the language is not of a small boy but of
an adult – so we can figure out the poem is of a
memory.
Audience in the poem
There’s often an audience that is in the poem. For example, the poem
may be written to someone specific [not us].
The audience in “My Papa’s Waltz” is the father because he says “the
whiskey on your breath” [your breath = father’s breath]. Also the title –
My Papa’s Waltz.

3. Words
• Diction: the choice and use of words and phrases in speech or writing.
– Why does the author use specific words?
• Syntax: order of words
– When words appear in a non-standard order, there is cause for further
investigation.
• Denotation: the literal meaning; Connotation: the implied meaning
– For example, the word slimy by itself can accurately describe a slug or
or the feeling on your face after your big dog greets you. However,
when slimy is used to describe a person, the reader recognizes that this
person is not someone you want to ask to housesit while you head to
the Bahamas for a week.
– Poets often make use of both literal and implied meanings in poems –
in fact, he or she may want us to see both meanings at the same time.

4. Figures of Speech
 Allusion is a brief and indirect reference to a person, place, thing or idea
of historical, cultural, literary or political significance. It does not describe
in detail the person or thing to which it refers. It is just a passing comment
and the writer expects the reader to possess enough knowledge to spot
the allusion and grasp its importance in a text.
This is a regular Garden of Eden
Relax, Romeo
That is a Pandora’s box.
 Oxymoron - impossibilities and contradictions
An oxymoron combines two contradictory terms like jumbo shrimp or
business ethics. The oxymoron can be similar to the paradox

5. More Figures of Speech
• Metonymy – words based on association
– Crown = monarchy, so when we say he took the crown, we don’t
mean he stole the crown We probably mean that he is ascending
the throne.
• Synecdoche – a part = the whole
– Hand = whole person, so when he takes her hand in marriage, he
does not just marry her hand, he marries all of her.
• Hyperbole—exaggeration
– I told you a million times to turn down that stereo!
• Litotes—understatement
– Litotes are figures of rhetoric speech that use an understated
statement of an affirmative by using a negative description.
• “not the brightest bulb”
• “not a beauty”
• “not bad”
• “not unfamiliar”

6. Impressions
• Imagery: sensory impressions
– The first stanza of “My Papa’s
Waltz,” offers an olfactory image:
“the whisky on your breath could
make a small boy dizzy.” There are
also sound images: “we romped
until the pans slipped from the
kitchen shelf.”The reader can hear
the clatter. Of course there are
visual images as well.
• Symbolism: [red rose = love]
– In “My Papa’s Waltz,” the waltz
itself is kind of a symbol. It is a
formal dance that could symbolize
two people moving together.

7. What can we learn from
the text of the poem
Let’s start with the title
What do you notice?
My Papa’s Waltz
Let me
ask you

8. Next, let’s determine the poetic techniques Roethke employs.
Line1: diction = "whiskey" (suggests
drunkenness)
Line 2: diction = "small boy" (speaker is
male)
The whiskey on your breath
Could make a small boy dizzy;
But I hung on like death:
Such waltzing was not easy.
Line 3: diction = "hung" (past tense of "hang" so speaker is a son reflecting
on his childhood)
simile = "like death" (negative connotation)
Line 4: metaphor = "waltzing" (the dance of life)
Alliteration= waltzing was (not easy). The gentle sound of the repeated “w”
(also hear the z/s/s sounds) contrasts with the striking simile about death in line
three and with the characterization of the waltz as “not easy.” The alliteration
makes the waltz sound natural and tranquil, but there are clear indications to
the contrary.

9. We romped until the pans
Slid from the kitchen shelf;
My mother’s countenance
Could not unfrown itself.
Try to do the next alone

10. Line 5: diction = "romped" (positive denotation = "to play or frolic
boisterously)
irony = meter is iambic trimeter
We romped until the pans
Slid from the kitchen shelf;
My mother’s countenance
Could not unfrown itself.
Line 6: discord/disharmony/noisy = [the pans] "slid," "kitchen" and "shelf”
Lines 7-8: alliteration = "countenance" and "could”
Line 8: personification suggesting “countenance” might control itself?
synecdoche* = her "countenance / Could not unfrown
itself" (Her entire appearance signifies her face.)
diction= unfrown is not a real word.

11. The father’s waltz becomes a symbol here (the child
is being waltzed, figuratively and literally, to bed). The
poem indicates early on that the waltz is not easy,
and yet it ends with the comfort and stability of bed.
The whiskey on your breath
Could make a small boy dizzy;
But I hung on like death:
Such waltzing was not easy.
We romped until the pans
Slid from the kitchen shelf;
My mother’s countenance
Could not unfrown itself.
.
My Papa’s Waltz
The hand that held my wrist
Was battered on one knuckle;
At every step you missed
My right ear scraped a buckle
You beat time on my head
With a palm caked hard by dirt,
Then waltzed me off to bed
Still clinging to your shirt.
Image
Image
Personification suggesting
“countenance” might control
itself? “Unfrown” is not a word.

12. Poetry Analysis
• Who is the speaker? The
audience?
• What do the words tell you about
the poem?
– Diction
– Syntax
– Denotation/Connotation
• Tools of analysis: paradox, irony,
ambiguity, and tension
• Figurative Language: images,
symbols, metaphors, similes,
alliteration, personification, and
hyperbole, litotes, metonymy,
synecdoche, allusion, oxymoron.
• Form:
– Rhyme, Rhythm, Meter

13. Consider which of these questions help you understand any poem
1. How does the work use imagery to develop its own symbols?
2. What is the quality of the work's organic unity In other words, does
how the work is put together reflect what it is?
3. How are the various parts of the work interconnected?
4. How do paradox, irony, ambiguity, and tension work in the text?
5. How do these parts and their collective whole contribute to or not
contribute to the aesthetic quality of the work?
6. How does the author resolve apparent contradictions within the work?
7. What does the form of the work say about its content?
8. Is there a central or focal passage that can be said to sum up the
entirety of the work?
9. How do the rhythms and/or rhyme schemes of a poem contribute to
the meaning or effect of the piece?