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My Papa's Waltz Personal Analysis

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My Papa's Waltz Personal Analysis
Index:

Introduction………………………………………………………………………………………1
Essay……………………………………………………………………………………………………2
Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………………………5
Bibliography ……………………………………………………………………………………6

Introduction:

For this paper, you will be able to encounter the various meanings, tones, structure, my personal opinion and analysis of the poem “My Papa’s Waltz” by Theodore Roethke. For more to add, you will also encounter with a brief biography of the poet Roethke which will explain why the poet wrote this poem and how much meaning it has for him.

The reason why I chose this poem out of the other seven choices that were given was because this poem captivated me. The poem itself has a lot of parts in which it amazed me, but what amazed me the most was of how the poet could give two opposite actions, feelings and emotions; that ambiguity all at the same time.

1
Essay:

“My Papa’s Waltz” was first written in 1942 by Theodore Roethke. It centers in the idea of the relationship between a father and a son.

Theodore Roethke was born in Saginaw, Michigan, in which he spent much of his childhood in the greenhouse –enlarging his love towards nature– where his father and uncle worked in. Roethke had a harsh childhood, which can be portrayed in many of his poems, as his father and uncle died at an early age. Maybe it was these harsh moments that depict the reason why Roethke’s poems are so confusing and hard to know what he wants to say.

“My Papa’s Waltz” is an iambic trimeter with an ABAB rhyme. It consists of 4 stanzas, each stanza having 4 lines, also called a quatrain. It is iambic because according to the shmoop page, one unstressed syllable is followed by a stressed one(1). Also, it is a trimeter because it has three stressed syllables. Relating to the tone, it can be seen first as violent but when looked deeply, it has a lovely, amiable and cheerful tone. Last but not least, it is a poem considered to depict connotation as it gives the association of



Bibliography: (1) http://www.shmoop.com/my-papas-waltz/rhyme-form-meter.html (2) http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/waltz?s=t 6

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