Loading...

Messages

Proposals

Stuck in your homework and missing deadline? Get urgent help in $10/Page with 24 hours deadline

Get Urgent Writing Help In Your Essays, Assignments, Homeworks, Dissertation, Thesis Or Coursework & Achieve A+ Grades.

Privacy Guaranteed - 100% Plagiarism Free Writing - Free Turnitin Report - Professional And Experienced Writers - 24/7 Online Support

My papa's waltz mla citation

04/01/2021 Client: saad24vbs Deadline: 2 Day

EBSCO Publishing Citation Format: MLA (Modern Language Assoc.):


NOTE: Review the instructions at


http://support.ebsco.com/help/?int=ehost&lang=en&feature_id=MLA and make any necessary


corrections before using. Pay special attention to personal names, capitalization, and


dates. Always consult your library resources for the exact formatting and punctuation


guidelines.


Works Cited Fong, Bobby. “Roethke’s `My Papa’s Waltz’.” College Literature, vol. 17, no. 1, Feb. 1990, p. 78.


EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=lkh&AN=9609111563&site=lrc-


plus.


<!--Additional Information:


Persistent link to this record (Permalink):


http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=lkh&AN=9609111563&site=lrc-plus End of citation-->


Section:


NOTES & DISCUSSION


ROETHKE'S "MY PAPA'S WALTZ"


Most recent critics of Theodore Roethke's work give "My Papa's Waltz" short shrift. If mentioned


at all, it is characterized as depicting the father's "mixture of tenderness and brutality" and the


child's "admiration and fear."[ 1] The waltz is at once a "happy and terrifying activity" that,


biographically, reflects "Roethke's vacillation toward his father, registering playful but poignant


tones in stanzas of iambic trimeter."[ 2]


Some of my students are able to perceive the poem as thus holding fear and joy in tension, but


mainly these are the ones who see the poem dispassionately, as a play of words on the page


where waltzing and romped are juxtaposed with battered and scraped and beat, where the child


is "waltzed off to bed" holding on "like death." The others, however, divide into two camps,


united by their common insistence that one emotion predominates, either fear or joy.


One party's interpretation accords with that of X. J. Kennedy, who argues:


Most readers find the speaker's attitude toward his father affectionate, and take this recollection


of childhood to be a happy one. But at least one reader, concentrating on certain details, once


wrote: "Roethke expresses his resentment for his father, a drunken brute with dirty hands and a


whiskey breath who carelessly hurt the child's ear and manhandled him." Although this reader


accurately noticed some of the events in the poem and perceived that in the son's hanging on to


the father "like death" there is something desperate, he missed the tone of the poem and so


misunderstood it altogether. Among other things, this reader didn't notice the rollicking rhythms


http://support.ebsco.com/help/?int=ehost&lang=en&feature_id=MLA

http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=lkh&AN=9609111563&site=lrc-plus

http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=lkh&AN=9609111563&site=lrc-plus

http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=lkh&AN=9609111563&site=lrc-plus

http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=lkh&AN=9609111563&site=lrc-plus

https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#m_6866258545076574701_bib1

https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#m_6866258545076574701_bib2

of the poem; the playfulness of a rime like dizzy and easy; the joyful suggestions of the words


waltz, waltzing, and romped. Probably the reader didn't stop to visualize this scene in all its


comedy, with kitchen pans falling and the father happily using his son's head for a drum. Nor did


he stop to feel the suggestions in the last line, with the boy still clinging with persistent love.[ 3]


Students espousing this reading have noted that their own fathers were reserved when sober,


and that some of their fondest moments were when "papa" became tipsy enough so that


exuberance and love could slip through. This "papa" wasn't the man they knew, so there was


some anxiety felt regarding the "stranger," but he was what these students as children wanted


more often from their fathers.


By contrast, the other side's response is captured by John Ciardi, who argues:


Despite its seeming lightness, "My Papa's Waltz" is a poem of terror, all the more terrible


because the boy is frightened and hurt by the father, even in play. "We romped," the poet says,


but the romp is a dizzying succession of painful glimpses; the house is shaking, the mother is


frowning, the father's hand is scarred by violence, every misstep in the dance scrapes the


father's belt buckle painfully across the boy's ear, and the boy's head is being pounded by that


huge, hard palm. It is a romp, but the boy must cling like death until he is finally dumped into


bed.[ 4]


For these students, alcohol is invariably associated with violence, and the mention of whiskey


on the breath calls to mind incidents when their fathers came home drunk and "romped" with the


family. What was "fun" for the father, however, was fearful for mother and children. These


readers see the waltz image and the rhythm of the poem as ironic counterpoints to the


stumbling brutality of a man who hurts even when he doesn't mean to. A more extreme reading


of the poem takes the waltz entirely as a euphemism for the father beating the child. The child


struggles to hold the father, to make him stop, and they lurch around the kitchen to the mother's


discountenance. This "waltzing was not easy," students have testified from hard experience.


The poem is like a seesaw, where the elements of joy (the figure of the waltz, the playful


rhymes, the rhythm), are balanced against the elements of fear (predominantly the effects of


diction such as whiskey, dizzy, death, unfrown, battered, knuckle, scraped, buckle, beat, hard,


dirt, clinging). The ambivalence of feeling extends to the narrative stance of the speaker. As a


student recently noted, the speaker is remembering an incident of childhood, and if the child


shared in the father's joy, the adult has learned to understand the mother's disapproval, for the


adult stands with the mother, observing.


The "preferred reading" among these interpretations is not a simple matter of appealing to the


text. The New Criticism, with its focus on ambiguity, figurative language, and irony, has not


resulted in the narrowing of interpretive possibilities, but rather has provided tools to account for


a poem's elements in a variety of ways and has proliferated interpretations. In the present case,


those who maintain a balance between joy and fear in the poem give equal weight to both


emotions. Those who see the joy in the poem 8 the diction of violence. And those who see the


fear treat the figure and rhythm of the waltz ironically. A seesaw tips easily, and "My Papa's


Waltz" is susceptible to the pressure of personal experience.


This is not to say that one's personal experience must always be privileged in reading a poem.


Following the lead of H. R. Swardson in "The Use of the Word Mistake in the Teaching of


Poetry," there are no hippopotamuses in "My Papa's Waltz." As Swardson puts it, "the student


https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#m_6866258545076574701_bib3

https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#m_6866258545076574701_bib4

who sees a hippopotamus there has made a mistake. I will say that interpretive communities


who see a hippopotamus there have, en masse, made a mistake."[ 5] What I have reported of


my students is recurring patterns of interpretation that, in my estimation, account for the various


elements of the poem in coherent but different ways. The words of a poem create a series of


filters that eliminate possible meanings. In the universe of possible readings, comparatively few


precipitate through all the filters. But in a poem like "My Papa's Waltz," several different


readings do succeed in making their way through. At that point, the "preferred reading" is not


found in the text, but in the interaction of reader and text. Students are not disembodied


intelligences; rather, they bring to the text distinctive pasts that comprise additional filters


screening out possible readings. This essay is a field report on that last set of filters.


At a recent conference, I learned that the poem is used in Jungian psychotherapy to treat


alcoholics. W. D. Snodgrass writes that in The Lost Son and Other Poems, of which "My Papa's


Waltz" was one, Roethke "regressed into areas of the psyche where the powerful thoughts and


feelings of the child---the raw materials and driving power of our later lives--remain under the


layers of rationale and of civilized purpose."[ 6] The achievement of "My Papa's Waltz" is that it


permits readers to access such potent memories in their own lives in ways consistent with the


words and construction of the poem.


NOTES


[1] Karl Malkoff, Theodore Roethke: An Introduction to the Poetry (New York: Columbia


University Press, 1966) 3, 57.


[2] See William V. Davis, "Fishing An Old Wound: Theodore Roethke's Search for Sonship,"


Antigonish Review 20 (1974): 33; and Walter B. Kalaidjian, Understanding Theodore Roethke


(Columbia University of South Carolina Press, 1987) 51.


[3] X. J. Kennedy, Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, and Drama, 4th ed. (Boston:


Little, Brown, 1987) 421.


[4] John Ciardi and Miller Williams, How Does a Poem Mean? 2nd ed. (Boston: Houghton


Mifflin, 1975) 369.


[5] H. R. Swardson, "The Use of the Word Mistake in the Teaching of Poetry." ADE Bulletin 91


(Winter 1988): 4-5.


[6] W. D. Snodgrass, "That Anguish of Concreteness--Theodore Roethke's Career," Theodore


Roethke: Essays on the Poetry, ed. Arnold Stein (Seattle: University of Washington Press,


1965) 81.


~~~~~~~~


by Bobby Fong


https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#m_6866258545076574701_bib5

https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#m_6866258545076574701_bib6

https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#m_6866258545076574701_toc

https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#m_6866258545076574701_bib1up

https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#m_6866258545076574701_bib2up

https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#m_6866258545076574701_bib3up

https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#m_6866258545076574701_bib4up

https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#m_6866258545076574701_bib5up

https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#m_6866258545076574701_bib6up

Works Cited

Homework is Completed By:

Writer Writer Name Amount Client Comments & Rating
Instant Homework Helper

ONLINE

Instant Homework Helper

$36

She helped me in last minute in a very reasonable price. She is a lifesaver, I got A+ grade in my homework, I will surely hire her again for my next assignments, Thumbs Up!

Order & Get This Solution Within 3 Hours in $25/Page

Custom Original Solution And Get A+ Grades

  • 100% Plagiarism Free
  • Proper APA/MLA/Harvard Referencing
  • Delivery in 3 Hours After Placing Order
  • Free Turnitin Report
  • Unlimited Revisions
  • Privacy Guaranteed

Order & Get This Solution Within 6 Hours in $20/Page

Custom Original Solution And Get A+ Grades

  • 100% Plagiarism Free
  • Proper APA/MLA/Harvard Referencing
  • Delivery in 6 Hours After Placing Order
  • Free Turnitin Report
  • Unlimited Revisions
  • Privacy Guaranteed

Order & Get This Solution Within 12 Hours in $15/Page

Custom Original Solution And Get A+ Grades

  • 100% Plagiarism Free
  • Proper APA/MLA/Harvard Referencing
  • Delivery in 12 Hours After Placing Order
  • Free Turnitin Report
  • Unlimited Revisions
  • Privacy Guaranteed

6 writers have sent their proposals to do this homework:

Top Essay Tutor
Helping Hand
Writer Writer Name Offer Chat
Top Essay Tutor

ONLINE

Top Essay Tutor

I have more than 12 years of experience in managing online classes, exams, and quizzes on different websites like; Connect, McGraw-Hill, and Blackboard. I always provide a guarantee to my clients for their grades.

$65 Chat With Writer
Helping Hand

ONLINE

Helping Hand

I am an Academic writer with 10 years of experience. As an Academic writer, my aim is to generate unique content without Plagiarism as per the client’s requirements.

$60 Chat With Writer

Let our expert academic writers to help you in achieving a+ grades in your homework, assignment, quiz or exam.

Similar Homework Questions

10 fielder lane howrah - Only real tutors - My cqu log in - Xsu spring concert - Python program for rail fence technique - CAPSTONE (This is a REWRITE) (Behavior and Perceptions to High HIV rate among African Americans) 7 PAGES - Organ Leader Discussion - Dgca cpl question bank - The road to winter essay - Essay Assignment - Mark & making a tee-shirt - Two questions - The good shepherd mosaic history - Htm zone map den haag - Discussion question - Anz order stationery online - Emotional changes during middle adulthood - In behavior modification a research design is used to - Pearson places not working - Cisco asa logging timestamp - A figure skater on ice with arms extended - Griffith university admissions contact - Scs 100 theme 2 marriage graphic organizer - A10 music - Week 4 Discussion Questions - Watch silas marner movie online - What does fx stand for in medical terms - Assessment 2 - Acute effects of exercise on inspiration - Flow through orifice meter - Mass-Panic - Andrew jackson jihad straight white male - Germanium diode spice model - Sir george cayley facts - Tarasoff v regents university of california - How are accounting policies defined in the literature - Recall the formula for figuring a company's inventory turnover ratio - Briere trauma symptom checklist - Blood raw louie bag instrumental - Https apps irs gov app freefile jsp index jsp - If the absolute pressure of a gas is 550.280 kpa - Safety and agency - Answers to cengage accounting homework chapter 6 - Cause and effect analogy examples - 1 Discussion - Problem set - Assignement - Not my business niyi osundare analysis - (ROK) WEEK 7 HOMEWORK FIN100 - History essay - Alis kebab house littleport - Which tv series coined the phrase "the tribe has spoken"? - Nicky yazdi property advisors - Love's executioner the wrong one died summary - Cross cultural essay topics - Potential energy 1 2kx 2 - How to write a concert report - BUS 409: Compensation Management - Unit 4 - Part of group work - Adi putra abdul ghani - Greek and latin roots practice quiz - How davy crockett died - Project Mgmt Process - Reflection, Discussion and Assignment - 200 Words - Different types of sensors used in robots ppt - Vitamin c analysis lab calculations - Circumference to diameter ratio - West coast transit case study - Wendy's target market demographics - Accounting - Engineering undergraduate vacation student - 7 domains of typical it infrastructure - Vce 2021 exam timetable - Phl 320 week 1 knowledge check - 4.88 km in miles - Cloud security standards ppt - Morrisons distribution centre swan valley - 250 words - P1v1 t1 p2v2 t2 - Cla - Project Work - Worlds of the text - How much money do you get in monopoly jr - Giuseppe penone's cedre de versailles reveals - Discussion board (respond to student post below) - Lobiondo wood and haber 2018 - Aaron maldonado oregon - Top ten badmash in pakistan - Organizational behavior a practical problem solving approach 2nd edition pdf - Lyme Disease - Harley davidson intercom setup - Og mandino the greatest success in the world pdf - Human Service Stakeholders Essay - Panjim's 2015 cash flow from financing activities is - What is prospective fault current - Cmi calculation - Job instruction sheet for counter person - Style with illusory motion crossword - Deep space composition - Romeo and rosaline quotes - Cultural influences on training and development - Lab phy101