Avowedly autobiographical poet, Michigan-born Theodore Roethke draws much of his influence for his subject matter from everyday life. Many of his poems deal with his self-introspection and search for himself through verse. Roethke is a visceral poet whose evocative verse reflects real-life struggles and questions of faith, personal identity, and the individual's relationship to family. One of his most famous poems, “My Papa's Waltz,” deals with these themes. A tribute of sorts to his late father, an immigrant of German origin, "My Papa's Waltz" tells the story of a young boy's conception of his extraordinary father, who sometimes arrives home late at night after a long day of work and a trip to the local bar. Roethke makes the reader feel the effects of the speaker's sometimes conflicting feelings towards his father, that is, partly admiration, fear, love, and nostalgia. The poem evokes the unique relationship between father and son and captures the interpersonal dynamic between the two. The speaker's memories come from childhood but are tied to later in life, which gives the poem a melancholy and nostalgic perspective. In "My Papa's Waltz," Roethke uses poetic devices, such as regular meter and rhyme scheme, vivid imagery, and diction, to mimic the kind of metaphorical dance the boy has with his father: a relationship based on the boy's ambiguous feelings of both admiration and trepidation. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay Organized into four stanzas of four lines each, "My Papa's Waltz" reads like a dance. The lines alternate between six and seven syllables of stressed and unstressed iambs. This back-and-forth meter gives the verse a swaying feel, mimicking a kind of awkward dance: The whiskey on your breath could make a little boy dizzy; But I resisted like death: Such a waltz was not easy. (Roethke, lines 1-4) You can definitely get this feeling of oscillation by reading the lines aloud, where the repeated pattern of the accented and unstressed program comes to life. Roethke also uses a regular alternative rhyme scheme (ABAB, CDCD…), which also helps make the lines read like a dance. In the passage above, Roethke rhymes with the final word of every other sentence, i.e. "breath" paired with "death" and "dizziness" paired with "easy." The entire poem follows this pattern and the effect is very much like an awkward waltz. This rhyming poetic device enhances the reader's impressions of the poem and increases the empathetic understanding the reader gains for the boy, who is danced around the kitchen by his drunken father. This empathy tends to have a confusing effect on the reader, who feels the same mixed emotions—humor, admiration, and an unsettling undercurrent of fear—that the speaker himself probably felt in that situation. The images of the poem also contribute to this ambivalent. and disturbing effect. There's something a little unsettling about the kitchen scene. The lines “whiskey on your Breath” (line 1), “battered on a knuckle” (10), and “you beat the time to my head” (13) make the reader feel a sense of danger for the child in this situation. At the same time, the poem straddles the line between rightness and wrongness, so it's hard to tell whether or not this is a comic bonding scene between father and son, or a case of actual abuse. The fact that Roethke can make the reader feel these conflicting emotions in so few short lines demonstrates his immense talent as a poet. The reader gets the sense that the child admires his father, as he notices the physical traits that show he is a.