Introduction
Fathers are the subject of much poetry, and these two poems, My Papa’s Waltz by Theodore Roethke and Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night by Dylan Thomas, are two of the best. The poems are as different as their subjects, though they are both memorable images. In the first, the poet relates a memory from childhood, when his working class and whiskey drinking father used to have fun dancing with him just before bedtime, and then waltz him off to bed. Roethke’s father taught English at the grammar school, but had grown up working class, and kept his friends. The second poem is written for the poet’s dying father, begging him to fight for life and not to simply give up. Thomas points out that life is precious and also lets his father know that he does not want him to die. Both poems are strong in emotional content and imagery though they use different forms and the primary emotions are different. The background difference shows in these poems, as Roethke was from a small, rather poor town in Michigan, while Thomas came from Wales, though both their fathers were educated men. Both poets are talking to their fathers, and had strong feelings of love for them, but Roethke remembers his father’s rough playful affection and Thomas remembers his father’s strength and dignity.
Main body
To begin with, both forms used in these poems are lyrical, though the forms are different, and the differences suit the difference in content. Roethke uses four quatrains with the song-like abab-cdcd-efef-ghgh rhyme scheme. Thomas opted for the more rigorous and confining villanelle form, which emphasizes the feeling that he considered his father to be very dignified and conservative. Roethke’s poem feels less powerful on reading, because it is a happy memory for the poet, but the strong images he paints for us have good staying power. Roethke’s poem uses shorter lines in a rather fun waltz like iambic trimeter with the even lines adding an unaccented extra half foot. This matches well with the rather happy tone of the poem, telling us about a cherished memory “romping” with his somewhat drunken father while standing on his father’s feet, “we romped until the pans/slid from the kitchen shelf”.
They shared this secret fun just between themselves. By contrast, the rhythm of Thomas’s villanelle is much more intense, almost rhetorical on the accented lines, which begin with two accented syllables, “Rage, rage against the dying of the light.” This magnifies the already strong emotional content as Thomas begs his father to “not go gentle into that good night”, to ”burn and rave at close of day,” and savor every last breath he takes. Thomas’s father was a teacher and Thomas was encouraged to write. His father had always dreamed of being a poet, and this troubled him, that he felt that he had let his father down, because he did not consider himself a success. He was well known, but more for his wild excesses than for his poetry, even though his poetry was certainly recognized. Thomas shows us in this poem how small he often felt against the vastness of nature and the universe.
In looking at the tone of the two poems, the humor in Roethke’s poem sharply contrasts with the seriousness, almost desperate tone of Thomas’s poem. The affection Roethke has for his watching mother even shows here in how he describes her. Roethke tells us, “my mother’s countenance/ could not unfrown itself.” What a wonderful phrase! It creates a marvelously silly image. One almost can picture the figure of the wife in “American Gothic”, except that she is holding the pitchfork in Roethke’s poem, and her frown is stuck, while her drunken husband waltzes off with their son standing on his shoes. The narrator had great fun seeing his mother quite put out while knowing that he was not the object of her ire. We can almost share the young boy’s joy. He remembers fondly times when he was a young boy and his father would come home drunk and dance with him, then tuck him into bed.
“Tucking in” was a very important thing to youngsters of the time, though it seems to have lost some of its magic in this day of television, but it is a fitting end to Roethke’s waltz with his papa, as the poet puts the memory safely away, that his father tucked him safely into bed. Thomas, by contrast, continues his ranting by saying that wise men know they must die, but that they fight, because they always know that their words could have had so much more effect. He tells his father that “good” men, who often mention that their own deeds were swallowed up by the vastness of the “green bay”, but might have been better in a different surrounding, also “rage against the dying of the light.” He says the neither “wild men, who caught and sang the sun in flight,” nor, “grave men…..who see with blinding sight…and (can) be gay,” “go gentle into that good night.” Roethke is holding fast to a wonderful memory of play time with his working class father who had been drinking, while Thomas is begging his father to hold on for just a little more.
Furthermore, one of the reasons that explains some of the contrasts is that the two poets had totally different backgrounds. Roethke remembers how his father’s hands were bruised and the palms were, “caked hard by dirt”. His father was a teacher, but grew up blue collar, and probably worked the land around the cottage, or maybe played sports with his friends, and showed his love for his son in much the same way that others of his class would do, by spending fun time with him. Roethke’s father bridged the gap between two classes, which were strong in his time. In fact, they were so strong that Roethke’s parents did not teach them Welsh so that their English would be better and their accents would not suffer. Local accents could greatly impede intellectual pursuits in the U.K., so local parents in Wales tried to insure their children’s future by raising them to speak only English. We know how young the boy in the poem is, because his ear scrapes the belt buckle of his father’s belt as they dance. We see no indication of the son’s age in Thomas’s poem. In fact, there is not even any picture at all of his mother or his father, except that we see his father as old and dying. At the last part of the poem he wants a reaction, any reaction, from his father, who was possibly nearly comatose at the time, “Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray.”
Conclusion
Finally, we take away such images as a small boy hanging on to his father’s shirt and standing on his shoes as they romp the pans off the shelf, causing the mother to get a frown stuck on her face, then holding on for dear life as his father waltzed him off to bed. Thomas’s villanelle confines his words, but the discipline is rather like loading a cannon well. He stuffs his powerful images into the narrow barrel of the form and then sets it off with the powerful lines. Thomas’s early lessons in rhetoric show here well as this poem lends itself easily to performance. One can almost picture the poet orating this to his father, with all the attendant drama and emotion. The last two lines are memorable and they hold all the fierce feelings Thomas had about fate and life, and the unfairness of it all. Yet, he wants whatever is offered and he wants his father to take every last bit that he can from life. He did not care for his father to die with dignity. He wanted him to die trying to live. Knowing both the differences in these two poets’ lives, and the similarities in their disappointments, and their uniqueness in English traditional poetry, we still understand that neither poet could have written the other poem. Their temperaments were simply totally different. These two poems to fathers both show a strong attachment in spite of their differences in imagery, tone and form, and they give us powerful images that allow us to share the feeling of the poets.
Reference
Roethke, Theodore, 1957, My Papa’s Waltz.
Thomas, Dylan, 1951, Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night.