My Papa's Waltz

The title of the poem “My Papa’s Waltz” foreshadows and helps to bring understanding to what the speaker is saying. What strikes me about the title is the fact that is it the speaker’s papa’s waltz, not theirs but his. Don’t you need to work as partners in order to dance together? The creative language used by the speaker: romped, battered, scraped, beat, and clinging prove that this is no easy dance. Instead the dance the speaker and the father share is very rough and aggressive. The speaker is in the mercy of her fathers actions. The speaker has no part in this dance other than to be clumsily dragged around. I think that the title mimics the relationship the speaker has with his or her father. He is controlling, not sensitive to his child’s feelings, and is preoccupied drinking “The whiskey on your breath/ Could make a small boy dizzy” (1, 2), and work “With a palm caked hard by dirt” (14).
Emera Gould