My Papa's Waltz Literary Devices

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The poem’s short lines also reinforce the fact that this experience is happening to a child. In his later poetry, Roethke uses nursery rhymes, jingles, and playground taunts to suggest the world of children to which he was trying to return in imagination and spirit. In “My Papa’s Waltz,” however, there is nothing to imagine, since the incident really happened—apparently more than once. Roethke wants the reader to identify with the child, not the adults in the poem, so he not only writes the poem from the viewpoint of a child but also uses the short lines common in poetry written for children (Roethke himself wrote two such volumes) and in the verses that children themselves write. “Papa” is a child’s term for a father; nevertheless, the reader
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