Roethke's revisions and the tone of "My Papa's Waltz." (Theodore Roethke)

From: ANQ | Date: March 22, 1998| Author: | Copyright information

Theodore Roethke made substantive revisions to "My Papa's Waltz" in two drafts. Differences between handwritten manuscripts show how Roethke attempted to balance positive and negative aspects of the poem, changing the child in the first draft from a girl to a boy. The poem contains many positive and negative connotations, leading to a work rich in ambiguity.

Written in the early stages of his career and counted among the "Greenhouse" poems, Roethke's "My Papa's Waltz" certainly lacks the length and complexity of the poems from "The Lost Son" and "The North American Sequence." Yet, this ...

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