Compare my fathers waltz and those winter sundays

These two poems honor fathers, in very different ways, although their life circumstances may have been equally constrained by economics, opportunities, personality, education, and perhaps even ethnicity. In Those Winter Sundays, the father is a remote figure, whose behavior is masked by a taciturn nature and the burden of responsibility.

While the Native-American oral tradition, which includes song and prayer, has generally been unchronicled, contemporary American Indians such as Ortiz are creating a canon of prose and poetry that draws on this tradition.

The only way to continue is to tell a story. The language is deceptively simple and conversational, presenting images with full significance.

In other words, the value of his poetry is not in presenting the life of the Native American as a cultural artifact, but in presenting the life of the Native American as one version of a contemporary American life.

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Both poems have to deal with father-son relationships, but both relationships between the speaker and the father are different.

Ortiz and Mamie Toribio Ortiz. Ortiz then attended Fort Lewis College, where he became interested in drama and English studies. A leader of the Indian Student Organization, Ortiz became involved in issues of fair treatment for native peoples.

Ortiz enlisted in the U. Army inafter which he attended the University of New Mexico at Albuquerque. They divorced in Western storytelling, in contrast, generally values a more finished story product. Readers follow the persona in this poem Compare my fathers waltz and those winter sundays the general statement of line 8, to an explanation that this planting was one of many plantings, finally closing in on the one particular story or memory he wants to relate.

Lines 11—12 There is a digression here, as there often is in the rhythms of natural conversation. The persona is telling the story to the reader in line 11 but almost addressing his comment to his father in line The rhymed couplet at the conclusion of the stanza emphasizes the tactile image of the sand.

Lines 13—17 The image of the sand brings the persona to the beginning point of the story, which is signalled by the stanza break. The father bends over the sand, pointing out to his son a place where the plow has overturned a nest of mice.

The effect is of patience, as the father clearly has with his son and the nest of mice and of focus, which is required for anyone to pay such close attention to tiny mice while plowing—or even to a child while doing adult work.

It is interesting to note that it is not enough for the father that the son see these animals; he directs him to touch the mice so that he can feel the life even in something so small. Lines 24—25 Line 24 characterizes the memory the persona has just related, referring to the gesture of the father, his gentleness toward the mice and to his son.

The tradition of passing on stories, information, about life from one generation to the next is the focus here. He is not merely relating what he knows to a generation that comes after him, he is presenting the tradition as a valuable lifestyle for everyone.

The poem communicates the understanding that even in the midst of busy adult life with its purposeful action, there must be time to honor even the smallest manifestations of life, even those that innocently get in the way.

Ortiz the poet has effectively become the song his father sang to him, which he sings to the reader in this poem. By describing his memory of his father showing him the overturned furrow and placing newborn mice in his hands, Ortiz highlights behavior, not words.

Teaching The relationship between parents and children is also one between teachers and students. Parents teach their children through example and explanation about the world and themselves.

Ortiz describes one such experience, in which his father teaches him compassion for all living things by moving vulnerable newborn mice to a safer place.

Ortiz comes from a culture with an oral tradition, and one means of passing down information about your family and people is by making it into a story which you tell to others. Ortiz uses singing, in this sense, figuratively.

Songs by definition include music and sometimes words. Nature The Acoma people are tied to the land, and Ortiz himself has commented that every aspect of his life is related to the natural world.

Poetry Teachers of poetry and fiction are fond of telling their students that good writing shows readers something rather than tells them about it. His father shows him the beauty and preciousness of living beings by placing the mice into his hands, just as Ortiz the poet shows readers his love for his father through description rather than explanation.

It is structured into five stanzas of varying length. The syntax is conversational, with the punctuation simply marking pauses and stops. The memory deepens in the third stanza, with the discovery of a nest of mice. Historical Context Native-American History:Poem: My Papa's Waltz In Roethke had written the “My Papa’s Waltz” The poem is about a young boy and his father, the father is drunk and dancing around, kind of .

Can you name the words in the poem 'Those Winter Sundays' by Robert Hayden? Test your knowledge on this literature quiz to see how you do and compare your score to others.

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Popular My Papa's Waltz (Roethke) Challenge Share Tweet Embed Score. Numerical Score; Percentage; 0/97 Timer. My Papa's Waltz by Theodore Roethke: Summary and Critical Analysis When the narrator was young, he would dance around with his father.

He would put his feet on top of his father's.

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Theodore Roethke hardly fits anyone’s image of the stereotypical high-minded poet-intellectual of the s through s. Born in Saginaw, Michigan, his father was a German immigrant who owned and ran a acre greenhouse.

Compare and/or contrast the portraits of fathers in Theordore Roethke's " My Papa's Waltz" and Robert Hayden's "Those Winter Sundays." Save your examination as a word processing document (preferably in Word format) with the file name Yourfirstname Lastname Final.

RICHARD ABCARIAN (Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley) is a professor of English emeritus at California State University, Northridge, where he taught for 37 years. During his teaching career, he won two Fulbright professorships.

In addition to editing Literature: The Human Experience and its compact edition, he is the editor of a critical edition of Richard Wright's A Native Son, as well.