诗歌欣赏范文

An analysis of the poem "My Papa's Waltz"Abstract:the beauty of poems lies in their linguistic features including phonological features,sound effects and figures of speech.This paper is going to analyzing these features in a poem written by Theodore Roethke-My papa'a Waltz.Key words:Theodore Roethke,phonological,sound effects figures of speechAbout the authorThedore Roethke(1908-1963).Roethke is a poet of the Midwest,he combined a love of the land with his vision of the development of the individual.Among his volumes of poetry are Open House(1941),The Lost Son and Other Poems(1948),The Waking(1953,Pulitzer Price),Words for the Wind(1957), I am! Says the Lamb(1961),and The Far Field(1964).About the poemThis poem consists of four quatrains,each line being an iambic trimeter.the poem is about a young boy waltzing with his father.one can assume that the speaker is a young boy,or perhaps the poet reminiscing his youth.The father dances around in a haphazard manner,knocking over pans in the kitchen.Upon first glance,the tone is humorous.The picture one immediately forms is rather comical with the boy clinging on for dear life as his chucking father spins him around and around,making a mess in thekitchen while the mother looks on discontentedly. However, the line ,"whiskey on your breath could make a small boy dizzy"suggests the father's drunkenness and "at every step you missed my right ear scapted buckle "suggest that the dance was not an altogether joyful one.Lines such as "hung on like death",and "beat time on my head "are might even lead the reader to think the father is abusive of the boy.Indeed,the satirical tone of this poem suggests that the speaker is somewhat critical of his father.The whiskey smell,the roughness,the inconsiderate and reckless actions are under scrutiny. The mother's frowning countenance suggests she too is rather unhappy with the scene.However,the winning tone of the poem is the light and comical one.Major theme of the poemThe poem shows that when the author was a little boy,he depended on his father very much,and despite the elements of criticism,a father-son relationship based at least partly on love.Sound effects1.End rhyme2. The poem is built of four stanzas(quatrain),each consisting of four lines.The rhyme scheme is ,in the first stanza-abab,in the second-cdcd,in the third -efef,and in the fourth-ghgh.There are eight end rhymes as follows:"1.Breath death2.[zi]dizzy easy3.[]pans countenance4.shelfitself 5.wrist missed 6.knuckle buckle 7 head bed 8 d sh2.AlliterationThere is a single ,clear alliterative in each of the first three stanzas of the poem.In lines 7/8"countenance /Could ",the sound of the repeated [k] gives a hard edge to an otherwise graceful-sounding stanza.The fact that this example of alliteration is contained within a brief description of the speaker's mother is a warning, or signal of danger,like the same hard "c" in the parental command "careful!"Line9-"hand that held " is an example of alliteration with the gentle sound of the repeated [h].3.Types of footThe meter of this poem is the iambic foot,which is one unstressed syllable plus one stressed syllable.Each line of the poem includes three foots.So the rhythm of this poem is iambic trimeter.My mo-ther's coun-te-nanceCould not un-fromn it-self.Figures of speech1.SimileThere is only one example of simile in the poem,so we should payspecial attention to it.In line 3,the speaker hanger on "like death".it is a complex and abstract simile whose meaning is neither obvious nor stable .This simile must work in two ways:death must be something that hangs on ,and the speaker must see his or her younger self in terms of death.it is an unlikely simile:"hangs on "means,roughly,"clings "in this context,but in what sense does death cling? A more obvious simile would be "like a burr"or "like a desperate man gripping a ledge."The fact that Roethke choose "death" makes us consider his purpose.perhaps he introduce death to emphasize the danger of the situation or the darker side of the "waltz".It also gives the child a power outside of human agency,which is the only way to any power over the father.Death "hangs on "in the sense that it is permanent,and perhaps the child wants to freeze this mother for fear of what will happen if he lets go.2.IronyThe first stanza introduces what is a heavily ironic tone that persists throughout the poem. A waltz sounds like a pleasant enough diversion,but the whiskey,the dizziness,and especially the word"death"collectively undercut this assumption and make us understand that the the situation is not entirely lighthearted.For example "The whiskey on your breath/Could make a small boy dizzy"(lines 1-2).These lines are ironic because,while it is possible that the smell of"the whiskey"alone would make the child dizzy,being swungroughly and even drunkenly about is probably to blame too.Another example is "We romped until the pans/Slid from the kitchen shelf(ines 5-6)".Counting the tone of the first stanza,the word romped here is ironic because it makes the waltz sound carefree,yet the effect of this romping is to cause violent,crashing disruption in the their domestic world.ConclusionBy brief analysis of the poem "my papa's waltz",I have a deeper understanding of the poem and a discover the importance of the application of sound and figures of speech in the poem.When we read a poem or other literary works,we should not only focus on their contents but also on their linguistic features.。