Finished Reading Response to “My Papa’s Waltz”

    I believe that this poem is actually about the abuse of a child, but could

have been intentionally written in a way so that the reader could interpret it in an

either/or way. For example, one line of the poem is “At every step you missed My

right ear scraped a buckle”. Some people could think that this line is about being

hit with a buckle, but some could think that it’s about playing around and the little

kid was short enough so that he could accidentally scrape his ear on his dad’s

belt buckle if he missed a step. When I first read this poem in the 7th grade, I

actually didn't think it was about the little kid getting abused; I interpreted it as

him and his father playing around the house after dinner. But after the whole

class shared their interpretations, most of them thought it was about the boy

being hit, and that's when I realized that the poem actually did sound like it was

about something more negative and dark than just lightly playing around.
   
    When I reread this poem again in the 8th grade, the image of a kid being

hit by his drunken father in the kitchen came to mind instead of playing around

and breaking things by accident, the way it did last year because of how my

classmates interpreted it last year. I noticed lines like “You beat time on my head

With a palm caked hard by dirt” and “Such waltzing was not easy”, and how they

could be describing child abuse. And today I'm not sure how I didn't see all this

when I was in seventh grade. This is where I believe rereading literature more

than once in different perspectives and with more than one idea in mind can add

more sides to it and even help you understand the text more and build onto your

ideas on it. Not just in poetry, but in any kind of writing it's best to not just think

one-dimensionally about what you're reading, even if a text may seem like it's

simple and straightforward at first. For example, when we reread Charlotte’s Web

earlier in the year, I realized even what seems like a book just for children like t

that can actually have a lot of meaning behind it.
   
    I do think that both points of view, being abused or playing, can work out in

interpreting the poem since I have thought in both points of view, and that the

author could possibly have written the poem in a way so that you can’t really be

sure if it means something light or something dark, which is a writing tool that I

think is very interesting and can make writing really great. If a piece of writing is

multi-dimensional and colorful instead of cliche and completely forward, then the

writing is certainly enhanced.
   
    In conclusion, I don’t want to pick one specific side on if the child in the

poem was being abused or really just playing, because the two both could work

and I’m not sure which is the “right” or “correct” side, if there is one. Good writing

is supposed to be multi-dimensional, and that’s what this poem is. It may be a

short poem, but there are so many ways you can interpret it.