Theodore Roethkes My Papas Waltz (p. 569)
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Prompt 1: Tone:
Depending upon your own experiences and what you emphasize in Roethke’s lines, this poem can have a positive or negative tone. How did you read this poem: as a nostalgic, generally positive memory of the speaker’s childhood or as a negative memory of a potentially abusive childhood? Using evidence from the text and terms from the Poetry PowerPoint, analyze the tone of this poem and how Roethke achieves it.
