In examining the four father poems, I chose to talk about "Breakings", "Black Walnuts", and "My Papa's Waltz". In each of the three poems the speaker reminisces about memories he has with his father that take place when the speaker was young.
             The three texts discuss the father's importance in the son's maturation.
             In the poem entitled "My Papa's Waltz," the author is writing about a son and his father doing some sort of activity. Throughout the poem some negative sounding words are used to describe certain events in the poem. I happened to choose the positive side because of the ending. The poem reflects a positive feeling at the end, "Then waltzed me off to bed still clinging to your shirt."(15-16). This sounds like the boy fell asleep while waltzing with his father. In this particular poem the father has been drinking, "The whiskey on you breath could make a small boy dizzy"(1-2). That line combined with the word death (3) gives the poem a starting bad feeling. It makes it sound like the father has been drinking and something bad is happening. The introduction of the word waltzing opens a new though pattern though. A waltz is a certain type of dance but when used in this line "Such waltzing was not easy"(4) it could mean a number of things. Since we know not of the exact activity that is happening a substitution of activities would work. To him it is hard because he is small, "At every step you missed My right ear scraped a buckle"(11-12) and obviously weaker than the father. These alone will
             make any activity harder for him then the father. "We romped until the pans slid from the kitchen shelf"(5-6). When I think of romping, I think of a little boy and a puppy romping in the grassy fields. No different in this case. The father is romping with his son. "My mothers countenance could not un-frown itself."(7-8). The mother isn't happy with what the guys are doing. In general mother always seem to disapp...