Two Fathers and Two Sons

Two Fathers and Two Sons

In the two poems ¡°My Papa¡¯s Waltz¡± by Theodore Roethke (page 12) and ¡°Those Winter Sundays¡± by Robert Hayden (page 2) father is the main character. Roethke¡¯s poem ¡°My Papa¡¯s Waltz¡± portrays the scene of a rough dance between father and son. The poem, ¡°Those Winter Sundays¡± is about the memory of a father rising up early on cold Sunday mornings to warm the rooms. Both poems portray a man¡¯s childhood memories with his father though in different styles.
The first poem ¡°My Papa¡¯s Waltz,¡± is in a conventional form which has four stanzas with each stanza consist of four lines. For example, in ¡°The whiskey on your breath/could make a small boy dizzy; /But I hung on like death:/Such waltzing was not easy.¡± words ¡°breath¡±, ¡°death¡± and ¡°dizzy¡±, ¡°easy¡± rhyme, and so on in the following stanzas. Hayden¡¯s ¡°Those Winter Sundays¡± is written in the free verse style. ¡°Free verse is just w...