Comparing Two Poems: "The Whipping" and "My Papa's Waltz"

Comparing Two Poems:

“The Whipping” by Robert Hayden & “My Papa’s Waltz” by Theodore Roethke



Hayden’s “The Whipping” and Roethke’s “My Papa’s Waltz” are two poems obviously by different authors but that have many similarities, namely theme and writing style, and can be easily evaluated using the standards set in the poem, “Ars Poetica” by Archibald Macleish.
Both of these poems are intended to take the reader back in time to a place in the speaker’s childhood when they were spanked by there parents. Each of these speakers describes their experiences in different ways, but both with the tone implying that the spankings weren’t always deserved. In “The Whipping”, the speaker makes it clear that memories sparked by watching a child getting spanked in the ...