Yes, it is the Roethke poem. The reference to
knuckels is "The hand that held my wrist was battered
on one knuckle. At every step you missed, my right
ear scraped a buckle". The child doesn't have the
battered knuckles, but I do think this child is in a
poor family situation or was in a poor family
situation. The way I look at the song is that the man
is looking back on what his childhood was like,
recalling his papa's drunken dances. He remembers
with a mix of bitterness and anger against his father
for treating him like a rag instead of a person,
sadness for the whole situation and pity on the father
who lost control of himself and probably didn't know
what he was doing when he picked up his little boy and
swung him around without a care. I think the
accompaniment backs this up too. The introduction is
a slurred waltz and the body of the music backs up the
uncertain mixture of anger and sadness the singer
feels when looking back. When I did this song for
NATS, I got some criticism from the judges for not
being clear on my emotional state: Was I feeling sad,
angry, bitter, pity? Yes, I was feeling all of them.
Back to the issue of child abuse, I don't think this
child was beaten or neglected. After all, his mother
was there, but he was put into many un-child friendly
situations when his father came home drunk.
I'd love to talk more about the mental state of
characters in songs if anyone wants to discuss them.
Later,
Trevor
--- Greypins@a... wrote:
> trevor,
>
> i'm assuming 'my papa's waltz' is the roethke
> poem. did you ever think
> that poem was about child abuse? supposedly, it is
> not but, i found the
> reference to 'bruised knuckles' to be unfortunate if
> it's not.
>
> mike
>
__________________________________________________
Yahoo! Photos - Share your holiday photos online!
|
