My Papas Waltz: An Analysis of Prosody - Essay Example

? “My Papa’s Waltz An Analysis of Prosody and how it enhances the understanding of the poem. A poem analysis can take many forms ranging from thematic commentary, to comment on stylistic devices used, to remarks about the setting of the poem. All those forms of analysis contribute towards the overall understanding of the poem. The choice of words used in a poem contributes a great deal towards the thematic concerns of a poem and the mood that the poem will set. Prosodic features of a poem entail aspects such as intonation, stress, and rhythm. Theodore Roethke in‘My Papa’s Waltz’creatively uses rhythm and rhyme, and to a lesser degree irony to convey his message to the reader. The use of rhyme occurs when there are words with similar ending sounds at the ends of the lines in a poem. The effectiveness of using rhyme in poetry is to enhance musicality, thus, making the poem interesting to read. My Papa’s Waltz has employed the use of rhyme in the following instance: breath/death, dizzy/easy, pans/countenance, shelf/itself, wrist/mist, knuckle/buckle, head/bed and dirt/shirt. The rhyme scheme for this poem is ababcdcdefefghgh. This is a regular rhyme scheme, probably an attempt to enhance the rhythm of the waltz, which is a dance in which two people dance together to a regular rhythm, just like the boy and the father are attempting to do. There is also the use of alliteration to enhance the rhythm of the poem; waltzing/was, hand/held, the/that and my/mother’s have been alliterated. The musicality that the poem portrays helps us to gauge the feelings of the boy, which is part of the message of the poem. The boy does not harbor any bitter feelings towards the father. Even though he might have treated him in an undesirable way, the boy chose to forget all that. The memories that the persona has with regard to the father come in the form of a song that creates rhythm in the poem. Another prosodic element that the poet has adopted is the use of an iambic trimeter. This is a conscious effort to develop a rhythm that marries with the theme of the poem, a struggle. It is evident that the persona and his father are struggling with the dance. In the second stanza, the persona says “we romped until the pans/ Slid from the kitchen shelf” (ll.5&6). Despite the conflicting situation between the father and the son, the poet tries to ensure that the poem depicts a concerted effort by the boy to keep up with his father at the dance. Iambic trimeter is a metrical foot consisting of an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable or a short syllable followed by a long syllable. The line consists of three iambic feet. It was commonly used in dramatic forms of tragedy and comedy for verses ‘spoken’ by characters as in the case of this poem. The persona is ‘speaking’ to his father in the poem and we can get his feelings towards the subject matter. With the adoption of the iambic trimester, the lines have to be short enough to create a faster reading, thus, a faster rhythm that matches the pace of a waltz. At the same time, there is a dominant conversational tone in the poem since the boy is talking about his father to the readers of the poem but there are instances when the poem goes off balance in terms of rhythm. This is in a bid to show that the boy is actually struggling to cope with the dance though pleasurably. For example, in the first stanza, two lines have adopted the trimeter, while line two and four has an extra syllable. This is an attempt by the poet to bring out the imbalance of the boy who was probably being affected by the strong smell of alcohol from his father. The lines, ‘the whiskey on your breath’ and ‘could make a small boy dizzy’ (Roethke), signify that the boy might have missed a step in the waltz due to the dizziness he felt as a result of the whisky in his father’s breath. However, he immediately gets his balance and gets to the right steps because of the determination to keep on dancing, thus, back to the trimeter. In stanza one, the rhythm is regular in that the iambic trimeter is maintained to the end of the stanza. This is because the persona is trying his best to enjoy the dance with his father even though it was not easy. This is evident in the last line that says, ‘such waltzing was not easy’ (Roethke). On the other hand, the second stanza is more rhythmic. This is most likely because the boy has got the hang of it all, that is, he is getting used to the dance and is trying to keep up with his Papa’s steps. This is why the stanza is entirely cast in iambic trimeter. The boy and his father are so engrossed in their dance that they stray in the kitchen shelves and proceed to topple the contents to the dismay of the mother, ‘my mother’s countenance could not unfrown itself’ (Roethke). The rhythm is maintained in the first three lines of the third stanza, where an iambic trimeter is maintained. This enhances the effect that the two are still enjoying their dance. Even though the occasional miss of a step by the persona’s father makes the boy’s right ear scrape on the father’s buckle. This bit of discomfort on the part of the boy probably makes him miss a step but at the same time, he stays alert for a while perhaps in anticipation of another pain. The spondee in the second foot of the last line of the stanza could be an indication of the level of being alert; there are actually three stressed syllables coming together. The first line of the last stanza starts with an iamb then a trochee and finally ends with a spondee. The words ‘you beat time on my head’ (Roethke) are unstressed/stressed/stressed /unstressed/stressed/stressed which in itself is rhythmic. The readers can almost see or hear Papa beating the rhythm on the head of the persona to match the tempo of the dance and may as well join in the tempo for it is regular ( predictable). However, the father’s palms are not in tune with the smooth flow of the dance, in that his hands are rough. To emphasize on this message of disruption of flow, an extra syllable is used. The last two lines of the poem end in an iambic trimeter, bringing with it a strong and unexpected ending.There is some sense of irony. Although the persona was uncomfortable with the dance at the beginning, he is now so much into it to the extent that he is reluctant to stop, thus, clings on the father’s shirt. It seems that he wanted to continue with the dance. Generally, the poet has adopted a rhythmic pattern of an Iambic trimeter throughout the poem with an occasional substitute trochee and spondee. The divergence was meant to pass on some message to the readers in the event of a disruption to the waltz. A regular pattern may have rendered the poem monotonous, and thereaders may have failed to capture some messages that the poet intended to convey. Works Cited Roethke, Theodore. “My Papa’s Waltz,” from The Collected Poems of Theodore Roethke. Westminster: Random Inc. (1961). Read More