On Teaching Poetry in General and "My Papa's Waltz" by Theodore Roethke in Particular

Once students are capable of taking literature seriously, which in my experience occurs sometime during their seventh grade year, the poem you select to teach first is important, as it serves as a doorway into the two worlds of poetry and literary analysis, which many students feel uncomfortable entering.

I have found that introducing poetry first by having students write their own original poems based on appropriate models like William Carlos Williams’ “This Is Just to Say,” which is presented to us in the form of a note from the speaker of the poem to his wife concerning the matter of some missing plums, works best.

Theodore Roethke’s “My Papa’s Waltz” has always been my favorite starting point when it comes to analyzing poetry because it has just about everything a teacher could possibly want in a first poem:  a great deal of highly evocative imagery, a bare minimum of figurative language, an easily discernible rhythm and rhyme scheme, and an intriguing situation.

I rarely assign the reading of a single poem for homework, at least not in sixth or seventh grade. I would much prefer to have a member of the class read a new poem out loud to his or her classmates at least twice, once to feel his or her way through the lines and once to give the reader’s increased sense of the poem a chance to shine. 

Then, based on what students have heard and on the text of the poem, which they all have in front of them, I begin a conversation about what the poem might “mean."  Obviously, during this discussion I ask some leading questions, and I also try to get students to reread lines to make what they believe even more apparent.

Eventually I will distribute a handout defining such terms as the poem’s subject, speaker, audience, and tone, and eventually we will talk about theme, but not too quickly. “My Papa’s Waltz,” written in iambic trimeter, is a wonderful poem to scan, and as soon as I define rhyme scheme, my students nail it.

I hope you will take the trouble to find the poem, read it, and, employing the materials I have provided, use it in your classroom.  Good luck! Harper