Compare and Contrast Poetry Essay

Jared Dougall 711

Often as a child you don’t appreciate or see your parents’ love for you, and take your parents for granted. The two poems “My Papa’s Waltz” by Theodore Roethke, and “Those Winter Sundays” by Robert Hayden, share many similarities and differences. Both speak about having relationships with fathers and the different ways that fathers show love. While the fathers are different, both poems are sweet, vivid mini-stories that capture the relationship between father and son.

         The two poems are similar because they both depict a father showing love, each in his own way. For example, in stanza 2 of “Those Winter Sundays” Robert Hayden writes, “I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking. When the rooms were warm he’d call.” That shows that the father would display his love in kind and caring acts, not with words. He would wake up early, and warm the house for his son, instead of more open acts of love. In stanza 1 and 2 of “My Papa’s Waltz”, Theodore Roethke writes, “Such waltzing was not easy. We romped until the pans slid from the kitchen shelf.” This showed that the father danced playfully with his son, and showed his love through some “rough housing” with his son. The two poems are also similar because both fathers are laborers. In “Those Winter Sundays” it says, “…with cracked hands that ached from labor in the weekday…” and in “My Papa’s Waltz” it states, “The hand that held my wrist, was battered on one knuckle… You beat time on my head with a palm caked by hard dirt.” This shows that both fathers are hardworking, and also shows that they have had difficult lives.

The poems are different because the speakers are talking to different people. For example, in “Those Winter Sundays” Hayden speaks to the reader. Stanza 2 shows this when it says “When the rooms were warm, he’d call, and slowly I would rise and dress, fearing the chronic angers of that house” which sounds as if the speaker was talking to a friend about his dad, or as if he was telling the reader a story. Hayden uses a more reminiscing tone. In “My Papa’s Waltz” Roethke is talking to the father throughout the poem. For example in stanza 1, Roethke writes, “The whiskey on your breath, could make a small boy dizzy”, this clearly shows that the speaker is directing words at the father. Also, the mood and the tone of each poem is different, because while one is more regretful, guilt-filled and sad, the other is more positive, cheerful and happy. The word choices and phrases used by Roethke such as “romped” and “waltzed me off to bed” indicate more happy circumstances, while Hayden uses “austere”, “lonely”, and “no one ever thanked him” to show woeful circumstances. Also, the two fathers’ personalities are different as well. The father in “Those Winter Sundays” is reserved, somewhat shy and quiet. For example, “(he) made banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him. When the rooms were warm, he’d call…” This shows that instead of more open acts, he would quietly make his son a fire and warm the house. The father in “My Papa’s Waltz” is friendly, loud and playful, like in stanza 3 where Roethke writes, “We romped until the pans, slid from the kitchen shelf.” The word choice, “romped” used by the author shows that the father played with his some in a lively, boisterous fashion.

In conclusion, these two fine poems are both similar and different. They both display a relationship between a hardworking father and his son, and the unique way each father expresses love for his son.  They show that there are more ways to show love than just saying “I love you.”  Both poems display a wealth of emotions, and with only a few words, draw a vivid mental picture of the fathers these poets are remembering.