“My Papa’s Waltz” is an early expression of a movement in American poetry in which historical context is at once vital and irrelevant. The poem was initially drafted and first published in 1942, just months after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor launched America’s grand war effort. Yet the poem defies that historical context and begs the question of who in 1942 America would have the interest to read a poem about a child struggling to dance with his drunk father.

The historical context in which Roethke developed as a poet was defined by two signature historical realities that account for the critical importance of Roethke’s poem. The first was the publication in the 1920s of the poetry of Emily Dickinson, more than 40 years after her death, poetry so unlike what had long defined American verse that it created a wave of enthusiasm for a kind of poetry that before was deemed irrelevant, even marginal: the excavation into the poet’s emotional experience. Dickinson’s poetry was quietly ironic, slyly subversive in its handling of rhythm and rhyme, and above all honest about the emotional conflicts and deep vulnerabilities of the poet.