'Positive And Negative Connotations In My Papa's Waltz'

“My Papa’s Waltz” is a poem that has both negative and positive meaning about it. No one on Earth is perfect and everyone makes mistakes, this is the case in the poem, “My Papa’s Waltz”. The poem tells of a father who is an alcoholic. The son is telling the poem of as the recalls his father being an alcoholic and later him understanding everything. Looking at the poem through a formalist approach help show how the positive and negative connotations reflect the young boys torn feeling towards his father. When first reading the poem, I thought that the son loved his father no matter what. My eyes were drawn to the positive connotations such as “but he hung on like death”, which explained how even through the father smelled of whiskey the son