This week our reading were focused on poems.  Reading poems has always been a challenge for me.  I often have a hard time understand the authors irony and theme.
"My Papa's Waltz" by Theodore Roethke tells a story of a dad who has drank to much whisky and is dancing clumsy around the kitchen with his son.  As the dance abrasively around the kitchen items fall of shelves, and mom is not happy.  Dad breath smells of whiskey, and his rough knuckles held the boys wrist.  The son does not enjoy the dance, but "hung on like death."  The boys ear is scraped by the dads belt buckle and the dad keeps time by hitting the boy on the head.  At the end the dad dances the boy off the bed.

This poem had a rough, negative attitude towards the dad, but yet I thought the author was trying the be somewhat joyful with the rhythms like knuckle and buckle.  I concentrated more on the drunken roughness of the father and how many children today are living the same circumstances.