Reading Bewteen the lines
To help understand poetry better the reader must look at the poem in two different ways. The first way a reader should look at a poem is by denotation. This means a person must read the poem through and look at the actual or literal meaning of a poem. A second way a reader should look at the poem is through the use of connotation. Opposite of denotation, connotation is the additional meaning that a word, image, or phrase may mean. Two poems, "My Papa's Waltz" by Theodore Roethke and "Metaphor" by Sylvia Plath can be analyzed using connotation and denotation. Looking at "My Papa's Waltz" literally, the reader sees a child remembering times with his father when he was a boy. Readers will see the title of the poem and think that the piece is about a rough and silly waltz with his father. The pattern of the rhyming words such as "breath" and "death" or "shelf" and "itself" support the view that this poem is a happy waltz. A waltz-like rhythm of this piece adds to the literal view of the poem being about a childhood encounter. The first few lines of the poem talk about the narrator's dad drinking somewhat heavily. "The whiskey on your breath could make a small boy dizzy" (1,2). The next two lines go on
Since it is placed randomly in the poem, it shows how random cravings sometimes are for pregnant women. Sometimes the beatings were so hard that the pans fell off the shelves as in lines five and six, "We romped until the pans Slid from the kitchen shelf" (5,6). Stanza three gives you a mental picture of them dancing by saying that the father is holding the boy's hand with his battered knuckle. Line five of the poem, "This loaf's big with its yeasty rising," represents a woman with a baby growing inside of her. " Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, and Drama. The number nine is not a mistake because Plath puts nine syllables in each line. By using tools such as connotation and denotation, readers can make their own conclusions as to what the author meant when writing a poem. The speaker says, "I've eaten a bag of green apples" (8). This does not mean that she has actually eaten a whole bag of apples but that she has merely eaten a lot and is feeling fat. Even through the beatings, this boy clings to his father for love. The word death is important because in love poems, it usually shows truthfulness and undisputable love. The next Stanza talks about the waltz getting a little rough and the two knocking pans off from the shelf.
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Acceptance Essays
