This is the third new post today, so check out the two under this one. As I mentioned in the previous post, my teacher (who in all fairness, I like very much) has a strange fixation with disturbing poems. She made us write a comparison essay on Sylvia Plaths poem "Daddy" and Rothke's poem "My Papa's Waltz". I have put both of their poems up here, so that you can read them. If you don't know them, then my essay will make no sense. Again, I was extremely upset about having to write that essay. But, here is what came of it...(I got an A++++)
MY PAPA'S WALTZ by Rothke
The whiskey on your breath
Could make a small boy dizzy;
But I hung on like death:
Such waltzing was not easy.
We romped until the pans
Slid from the kitchen shelf;
My mother's countenance
Could not unfrown itself.
The hand that held my wrist
Was battered on one knuckle;
At every step you missed
My right ear scraped a buckle.
You beat time on my head
With a palm caked hard by dirt,
Then waltzed me off to bed
Still clinging to your shirt.
Daddy by: Sylvia Plath
You do not do, you do not do/Any more, black shoe/In which I have lived like a foot/For thirty years, poor and white,/Barely daring to breathe or Achoo./Daddy, I have had to kill you./You died before I had time/--Marble-heavy, a bag full of God,/Ghastly statue with one gray toe/Big as a Frisco seal/And a head in the freakish Atlantic/Where it pours bean green over blue/In the waters off beautiful Nauset./I used to pray to recover you./Ach, du./In the German tongue, in the Polish town/Scraped flat by the roller/Of wars, wars, wars./But the name of the town is common./My Polack friend/Says there are a dozen or two./So I never could tell where you/Put your foot, your root,/I never could talk to you./The tongue stuck in my jaw./It stuck in a barb wire snare./Ich, ich, ich, ich,/I could hardly speak./I thought every German was you./And the language obscene/An engine, an engine/Chuffing me off like a Jew./A Jew to Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen./I began to talk like a Jew./I think I may well be a Jew./The snows of the Tyrol, the clear beer of Vienna/Are not very pure or true./With my gipsy ancestress and my weird luck/And my Taroc pack and my Taroc pack/I may be a bit of a Jew./I have always been scared of you,/With your Luftwaffe, your gobbledygoo./And your neat mustache/And your Aryan eye, bright blue./Panzer-man, panzer-man, O You/-- Not God but a swastika/So black no sky could squeak through./Every woman adores a Fascist,/The boot in the face, the brute/Brute heart of a brute like you./You stand at the blackboard, daddy,/In the picture I have of you,/A cleft in your chin instead of your foot/But no less a devil for that, no not /Any less the black man who/Bit my pretty red heart in two./I was ten when they buried you./At twenty I tried to die/And get back, back, back to you./I thought even the bones would do./But they pulled me out of the sack,/And they stuck me together with glue./And then I knew what to do./I made a model of you,/A man in black with a Meinkampf look/And a love of the rack and the screw./And I said I do, I do./So daddy, I'm finally through./The black telephone's off at the root,/The voices just can't worm through./If I've killed one man, I've killed two/--The vampire who said he was you/And drank my blood for a year,/Seven years, if you want to know./Daddy, you can lie back now./There's a stake in your fat black heart/And the villagers never liked you./They are dancing and stamping on you./They always knew it was you./Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I'm through.
From "Ariel", 1966
(my poem)
Darkness and Light
Roethke, your waltz was a joy to my soul
And I danced, danced, danced with you
But you made me cry and the tear in my eye clouded you on your papa’s shoe.
From the dirt and the grime as you counted time
I wanted to rescue you.
But a moment of joy for an innocent boy is worth hundreds of hours to rue.
Plath you chose darkness when Roethke chose light
And Roethke has found his own way.
You followed another, he got lost, you gave up and blamed Daddy for your dying day.
You married a man in the same sinking sand
And lost him in the same black hole.
Then hopeless and helpless you gave up forever and dove in on your dying day.
His story--of patience, between the lines.
And forgiveness; hard earned by pain.
Made me feel joy with the innocent boy and anger for what he chose not to say.
Plath’s story I hated, her bitterness grated
Her honesty was like a spring rain.
Clean as it fell, leaving mud on the ground, washing cold winter away.
