Revised Reading response to "My Papa's Waltz" (Draft in progress)

             Before I begin my response I would just like to re-post the poem again so that you may follow along with what I am saying.(Or typing...Whatever you prefer but I'm posting it. Ok!)

 

My Papa's Waltz

The whiskey on your breath
Could make a small boy dizzy;
But

I hung on like death:
Such waltzing was not easy.
We romped until the
pans
Slid from the kitchen shelf;
My mother's
countenance
Could not
unfrown itself.
The hand that held my wrist
Was battered on one
knuckle;
At every step
you missed
My right ear scraped a
buckle.
You beat time on my head
With a palm caked hard by dirt,
Then
waltzed
me off to bed
Still clinging to your shirt.

            This is my response to the poem "My Papa's Waltz" which was posted above. When I read this poem I felt that there were many ways to interpret this poem, for example most people would like to view it as child abuse, I for one do not. But! This is simply my own personal opinion about it. I have taken it upon myself do do some research about the poem So that I know where other people are coming from and how other people view the poem. I also wanted to know more about the author to see if that could tell me more. Honestly this poem is extremely intrigueing to me because I can't seem to just automaticly figure it out like I do with most poems.

           First things first before I come out with research and findings I would just like to give my point of view on the poem and my observances because its only fair to do so.The lines that say "The wiskey on your breath could make a small boy dizzy"; "My right ear scraped a buckle", and "You beat time on my head with a palm caked hard by dirt, then waltzed me off to bed still clinging to your shirt," clearly demonstrate where they would get that inferance. But the way that I see it, like my poems point of view is that the father works hard. He had just come home from work because maybe hes a construction worker, his wife cooked dinner and during dinner he had a few drinks. After dinner the father went to the kitchen with his son and they started to waltz the father counting the time of the steps on the child's head "Dun dun dun-pause-dun dun dun" a classic waltz beat. While the father is moving and their stomping they're making a mess in the Kitchen and the mother who had been working all day to clean the house and had finally gotten the kitchen perfect was mad because they destroyed it.  The way that I interpreted this poem was that there was no child abuse therefore a few lines should not imply child abuse. But all people are entitled to their
opinions and I am not tryng to 'brainwash' anyone just simply stating my own point of view.

                  

I also wrote a poem response to "My Papa's Waltz" from the Mother's point of view. The poem is called "Their Broken Waltz".

 

Their Broken Waltz

 

Their Waltz...Their mess.Pots,pansBroken
platesSpoons, forks, knivesAll over MY kitchen
floorThey waltz around like idiotsLeaving a
messy trail behind themthey're not the ones to clean it upso
they continue thinking no one minds themTheir waltz their mess
they think its funnythey waltz upstairs leaving me to the
messBut before they goI give them a lookThey
better knowthat I'm upsetnow is not the time to makea
messthe house was clean again and
at its best.

One thing that I found was really interesting, it was a website.   :
< http://www.mrbauld.com/exrthkwtz.html >

I would hope that you take it upon yourself to click the link.The website showed all the voices and tones for each verse and ocasionally a single line alone. I found all of this interesting because during my search I found it hard to get a straight answer out of any website.