My Papa's Waltz
The whiskey on your breathCould make a small boy dizzy;But I hung on like death:Such waltzing was not easy.We romped until the pansSlid from the kitchen shelf;My mother's countenanceCould not unfrown itself.The hand that held my wristWas battered on one knuckle;At every step you missedMy right ear scraped a buckle.You beat time on my headWith a palm caked hard by dirt,Then waltzed me off to bedStill clinging to your shirt.
-Theodore Roethke
My father was quite a light drinker, I never knew him to dance, and he worked a desk job. Still I've always liked this poem. 😉
But I was thinking about ballad meters and this came to mind. I might post some other ballad-y things in the near future.
Theodore Roethke was an American poet born in Saginaw, Michigan in 1908, who died in 1963. This is from his second book of poems, The Lost Son and Other Poems, of 1948. It's one of two poems of his that I used to have memorized (and might still if I thought about it).
I remember standing with my feet on top of my dad's and dancing with him when I was little. It's a good memory. :D
ReplyDeleteMy dad played cards with me--or told me endless math problems before I went to bed. I was a nerdy little child. ;-) So that, too, is a good memory!
DeleteRoethke was the guru of my guru:
ReplyDeletehttps://reghartt.ca/cineforum/?p=34855
And this was one of Roethke's poems that I liked, a little.
I'd read that piece of yours before but I'd forgotten Roethke came into it.
DeleteRoethke understood what rhythm and rhyme were, at least for a while, but like so many American poets of that era he decided it was declassé and switched to a free verse style. Bah. But he could be good. I suspect any others of his you like are like the ones I like--though I think you're preferences in poetry are even more formal than mine--but ones that at least have some sense of formal poetics.
My problem with Roethke was actually less to do with form than with a certain kind of irritating cuteness, and with what seemed to me to be a pretentiously over-deliberate cultivation of thematic and symbolic images. I think I still have by memory the whole first stanza of one of his most anthologized poems, which I think may illustrate a bit of what I mean.
DeleteI knew a woman, lovely in her bones.
When small birds sighed, she would sigh back at them.
Ah, when she moved, she moved more ways than one.
The shapes a bright container can contain!
Of her choice virtues only gods should speak,
Or English poets who grew up on Greek.
(I'd have them sing in chorus, cheek to cheek.)
Intolerable.
You're right, though, that he had an extraordinary lyrical ear, which is the second reason I read him with such care when I was a teenager (the first being that he was my guru's guru). That ear made even his free verse more than tolerable, though the fact that I was introduced to it by the fourth symphony of William Bolcom - Errol/Jiva's friend and colleague in Roethke's poetry composition class - that fact will have helped. Last I checked, the fourth - whose second and final movement is a for me deeply moving setting of The Rose for solo soprano - was conspicuously absent from what looked like Youtube's otherwise almost complete collected works of Bolcom. Time to check again.
That is the other Roethke poem I once had by memory and might still be able to reproduce all four verses if I tried. Intolerable, perhaps, but memorable, ;-) a useful quality in poetry. Though I'm not totally immune to the occasional bit of sentimentalizing cuteness. (I mean heck I like Dickens.)
DeleteIt's definitely true even in free verse one knows when the poet has a mastery basic English lyrical verse. Example number one being Eliot.
I did not know about Bolcom & that Roethke had been set to music. I'll have to check that out.
Are you currently writing? Poetry or another novel? You should!
I meant to ask if you're writing or publishing too. (I'm at work, a bit distracted.)
DeleteContinue working on the verse novella that is the Propertius project. Translation of a short Catullus elegy which connects came out not so long. Link in the writing tab.
DeleteBolcom was one of the few people I had to inform of Errol/Jiva's death. Another was the journal Poetry Northwest, which Errol founded in those days. They didn't reply at all, which really disgusted and outraged me. Roethke made an exception to admit Errol and Bolcom to his famous poetry workshop, since they were both underage prodigies at the time, exceptions in the University of Washington generally. I came to know Bolcom's fourth before most people, because Bolcom had sent Errol/Jiva an unpublished tape recording of the premiere, conducted by Leonard Slatkin, with Bolcom's wife Joan as the soloist in the second movement.
ReplyDeleteI'm always writing a novel, to keep me company, or just to survive. I finished another one a couple of months ago, which had taken me an unusually long three years to write - the longer the better, for my purposes.
Bolcom does sound interesting. I'm going to have to explore more in what's available on Youtube.
DeleteCongrats on finishing. That's always a nice (though dangerous-feeling) moment.
Oh God, the fourth symphony is now on the Tube, each of the two movements in its own upload. The personnel is all the same, this is probably the very same recording I had on the tape Bolcom himself had sent to Jiva.
Deletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6oEuiqibwA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e4cUjt3O5uw
I've just heard Bolcom's fourth for the first time in decades. Yes, the second movement, The Rose, is overwhelming. At the heart of the poem is a vision of Roethke's father that is essentially the same as the one in My Papa's Waltz, but is here made to channel something far more powerful and deep.
DeleteThanks. I will definitely have to check that out.
DeleteJoan _Morris_. Took this long to come back to me.
ReplyDelete