‘’the whiskey on your breath could make a small boy dizzy’’
The father might possibly be a very violent man we see this when it says which tell us that the dad likes a fight or two the poet recalls how
‘’the hand which held my wrist was battered on one knuckle’’ and
‘’at every step you missed my right ear scraped a buckle’’.
Theodore Roethke writes
‘’you beat time on my head with a palm caked hard by dirt, then waltzed me off to bed still clinging to your shirt’’.
The word ‘’waltz’’ in this poem I think is referring to a dance in ¾ tune. When the father comes home rather drunkenly from work. He gathers up his small son and waltzes him round the kitchen. Because his father is drunk the movement is unsteady and disorderly and this is how the pans are knocked off the shelf. This is how the boy’s ear gets scraped on the fathers buckle. I think the father does not mean to do this I think he does love his son but he is that drunk he does not know that he is scraping his sons ear on his buckle and the dance is suppose to be an expression of this. We can tell that the boy is in some pain because the poet indicates that
‘’the hand which held my wrist was battered on one knuckle’’ and
‘’at every step you missed my right ear scraped a buckle’’.
This next poem I will talk about is ‘’The Early Purges’’ by Seamus Heaney. this poem is different than My Papas Waltz in the way that it is about deliberate violence towards animals and My Papas Waltz is about violence towards humans. This poem is about a little boy who has a shocking experience of watching kittens being drown. This was a horrible experience for the 6 year old boy. Seamus Heaney goes into great detail in describing the way in which the kittens die, he recalls their
‘’soft paws scraping like mad. But their tiny din was soon soused ‘’.
The language Heaney uses is fascinating language, he uses everyday language when he quotes Dan Taggart’s of the kittens as
‘’The scraggy wee shits’’.
This is my favourite poem of the three because of the language Heaney uses. It’s easy for me to relate to what happens I can just imagine the scene and ‘’hear’’ Dan Taggart’s voice when he gets rid of the kittens so easily.
The poet shows his sadness by staying around the yard for days after the event took place. Watching the three “sogged” remains turn “mealy and crisp as old summer dung” Then after a while he forgot about them. But the fear returned when he was reminded of it again because Dan Taggart trapped rats, snared big rabbits, shot crows and with a sickening tug, pulled the necks from old hens.
Although it might have taken him a long while, he finally overcomes his fear of killing animals now when he says
‘’ when shrill pups are prodded to drown I just shrug ‘Bloody pups’!”.
But he also informs us that “prevention of cruelty” talk cuts ice in town but it has to be done on “well-run farms’’. I liked this poem very much.
My third poem which I will talk about is ‘’Our Father’’ by Ray Matthew. This poem is about a boy talking about his father and the poet recalls how he swore like a fettler, drank like a bottle, left money for food and called the children by numbers (this tells us he didn’t care about them very much). The poet remembers what a woman has told him about his dad,
‘’She said my father had whiskers and looked like God’’,
This tells us that the father wasn’t at home much and didn’t seem to have time to care about his children. Indeed that he used needless brutality to deal with family problems or to discipline his children. However on a Sunday he turned into a different type of man altogether he done himself up all nice and tidy for mass and walks out proudly to church, this is the way that the children would like to see him everyday but after mass on Sundays he was back to his old self again drinking and running away from the mother on the Monday morning. It seems to me like the children don’t really like their father that much in fact they hate him because it says
‘’we made jokes about him, we were afraid because already we understood about hating’’.
What I cant understand in this poem is that the father absolutely loves mass and wouldn’t miss it for the word because he goes to get his sins forgiven but after he goes and gets his sis forgiven he comes right home and sins like there’s no tomorrow!! Evidence of this is that it says
“When we got home he’d take off his collar, and his shoes and his Sunday-special braces; and we’d whisper he’s not like God So that he’d belt us for the noise, and we’d yell’’.
I have now discussed all three poems with you and I have to say that my favourite by far is ‘’The Early Purges’’ I picked early purges because of its style of writing , Heaney uses the type of language that we would use in everyday life. It is far easier to understand because I am used to reading and saying these words. I also like the poem because of its story line I like the way that at the start the boy was scared of seeing animals being killed but near the end and the boy is almost comfortable with killing animals because he says ‘’I just shrug ‘’Bloody pups’’.
Conor Hamill 11A1