Fathers In Poetry (Theodore Roetheke V. Sylvia Plath)

9 Pages 2214 Words

immortalizing his father=s memory. Isn=t that, after all, why one writes in detail about a specific incident that has made an impression upon them? AMy Papa=s Waltz@ is almost like a journal entry in which Roethke recollects the happy time he has had with his father, whereas Plath describes events in time in more vague terms; her recollections fulfill the purpose of criminalizing her dead father.
Plath=s poem has a definite solemn feel to it; appropriate for a work containing so much spite and pent-up resentment. There does not seem to be any system to the rhyme or where she places the words she repeats several times over. Likewise, there is no apparent rule governing the number of syllables in each line, which sometimes creates an awkward, uneasy feeling when reading. The only thing that seems to have any reasoning behind it is the number of lines per stanza, which is five. Roethke does almost the opposite of Plath and uses perfect ABAB form with a fairly uniform number of syllables per line. This gives the poem a real rhythm; the iambic trimeter gives the poem approximately the same beat as a waltz has. This subtly ties the poem=s structure to its title and Aromping@ theme.

AMy Papa=s Waltz@ is a fairly straightforward poem in terms of the events recounted in it. What happens in the poem means exactly what it implies. The father has whiskey on his breath, he dances wildly around the house with his son clinging to him, they knocked things down, they missed steps, and the father put the boy to bed. It is only in the context where things become murky, because, after all, no context is ...