My Papa's Waltz

My Papa’s Waltz

Much like the last poem I wrote about, “Those Winter Sundays” by Robert Hayden has a sense of ambiguity because we don’t really know as readers whether or not the child is enjoying the experience, and whether or not the father is being mean or if he is just playing around in the kitchen with his son.
We see that the mother’s face “could not unfrown itself” and in my mind I’m thinking that her face is upset either because they are knocking the pans off the shelf and she’s going to have to clean it up or because she doesn’t like what the father is doing to the son. I believe that that aspect of the poem is one of the things that emphasizes the ambiguity.
Also the son “hung on like death” which could mean that he really needed to hang on and cling to his father, or it could be because that was the only way he could somehow avoid the father’s hands. This statement has a negative connotation to it because they say that the son was holding on to his father “like death” and another statement that has a negative connotation would be “the whiskey on your breath” because the smell of whiskey on anyone’s breath is not a pleasant thing.
I really liked this poem, but I didn’t like it at the same time. To me it was like the father was beating his son, and because of the title “My Papa’s Waltz” it was almost like it was something trademarked to his father, so it was like it was something that happened often.

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.