"My Papa's Waltz" by Theodore Roethke

"My Papa's Waltz" by Theodore Roethke is about a child who's father, after working all day, comes home and drinks whiskey, and then dances the waltz.  This poem follows the ABAB CDCD rhyming pattern, with alternating lines ending with words that rhyme and/or have repeated sounds. With the simile, "But I hung on like death;", creates an image for the reader that the child was holding onto his/her father tightly while dancing, despite his drunkenness. With other techniques such as repeated sounds (often found in the rhymes), and somewhat dense imagery, the reader can get a generally clear picture of the two dancing around in the kitchen, with the pots sliding off of the shelves and the mother's look of disapproval.

The narrator of "My Papa's Waltz" was most likely a small boy, as in line 2 it says "Could make a small boy dizzy;".  If this line hadn't been included in the poem, the narrator would have been most likely perceived as a girl. Because this was included, the tone of the poem changes, and as a reader I can picture a father and his son having a good time dancing around in the kitchen. With imagery in the third stanza, talking about his father's hand, the reader can start to get an understanding of what the father was doing all day: working. This is also conveyed in the fourth stanza, when it talks about his palm being "caked hard by  dirt" (line 2).  This also creates an image for the reader of not only what the father's hands actually look like, but what the father and the boy look like while they dance, as they probably had not seen each other all day and were having a good time.  The last two lines of the last stanza, "Then waltzed me off to bed Still clinging to your shirt", finish off the poem with a clearly happy tone that the father and the son danced until they could no longer dance, and the little boy had enjoyed the time with his father, as he was still clinging to his shirt.