Although often overlooked, the form of a poem can be just as important as the words within it. Through careful analysis, a reader can start to piece together different aspects of a poem’s structure and directly relate it back to the overall content. In the poem My Papa’s Waltz, author Theodore Roethke deliberately uses form to create a child-like quality while at the same time mimicking the meter of a waltz, a usually slow and elegant dance that brings two people closer together. Moreover, in this poem a waltz is represented in a very different way to demonstrate a disordered relationship that switches back and fourth between flawed and fun loving. Rhyming is a characteristic that takes front stage in this poem, much of which is slant rhyme.
