My Favorite Poem by Kaye Spencer #poetry

American poet Theodore Roethke (1908-1963) was born May 25, 1908.

Although he isn’t my favorite poet, he did write my favorite poem, My Papa’s Waltz, which was originally published in ‘Hearst Magazine’ in 1942.

My Papa’s Waltz has been taken apart, turned upside down and inside out, and analyzed under literary and scholarly microscopes to find the deeper meaning—the true meaning (rolling my eyes)—that Roethke intended beneath the surface.

What pleasure do we get from poetry if we rely upon someone else’s opinion and interpretation to tell us what the poem really means to us? Why do we have to read for symbolism in order to have a poem touch our heart, speak to us in a uniquely personal way, or have a special meaning that is ours alone ?

I think literary critics would do well to employ a little less Freud and a little more heart in their literary evaluations.

Poetry is personal. Poetry must be savored, thought about, read and read again, spoken aloud. What shouldn’t happen is poetry analyzed to the point of it being an impersonal list of institutionally scrubbed and disinfected words strung together.

My Papa’s Waltz takes me back to my happy childhood with loving, attentive parents.

For me it is a straight forward, captured-moment-in-time of a playful and loving dance between child and father (or grandfather in my case). I stood on my grandpa’s feet and danced like this many, many times, and my ears did occasionally scrape his belt buckle.

When I read this poem, I still smell his whiskey, beer, cigarette smoke, chewing tobacco, garden dirt, and wood working that make up my olfactory memories of him. He was my maternal grandpa who lived just across the pasture and around the pond from me.

Above Picture: Spring 1958 – Me with Grandpa George on his roof. The back side of his house was built into a dirt bank, so it was easy to crawl up and sit on the roof.

Above Picture: Christmas 1956 – I was almost two years old.

Above Picture: This was my 5^th birthday.

Some interpretations of this poem insist that Roethke was frightened of his father, because of his father’s drinking and violent behavior, which is apparently evident in the poem. I don’t read this into the poem. The lenses in my world-view glasses have a rosy, happy color about this poem.

My grandpa was a carpenter, a gardener, an outdoorsman, a musician, a self-taught scholar, and a teacher of life skills to an attentive granddaughter. He taught me to play the harmonica by ear. He raised pigs and chickens. His hands were often dirty and his knuckles often battered. He was of the blue collar working class.

We sometimes danced around the kitchen and knocked things off shelves, but we had a darn good time. By today’s standards, I suppose he was an alcoholic, but he did a day’s work every day, because there was work to be done. He was an awful housekeeper (widower), but I didn’t realize that or care. When I was 12, he finally got indoor plumbing. He cooked on an old fashioned wood stove that also heated his house. He was born in 1898.

My Papa’s Waltz is, and will remain, a cherished poem that takes me back to my happy childhood with parents and a grandpa who was a good and decent man, despite the whiskey on his breath…

Here is Theodore Roethke reading his poem, My Papa’s Waltz.

See you next time...

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