Hello dear friends, today I thought we should take a look at waltz. I think most of us have tried to dance it at least once but I know that I for once have learned that in waltz you learn counting to three.

I wonder how much you have reflected on the “beat” of a poem in the same way you do with music. Today I thought we should make some effort counting to three.

When I searched for poetry and waltz I came upon this

My Papa’s Waltz
BY THEODORE ROETHKE

The whiskey on your breath
Could make a small boy dizzy;
But I hung on like death:
Such waltzing was not easy.

We romped until the pans
Slid from the kitchen shelf;
My mother’s countenance
Could not unfrown itself.

The hand that held my wrist
Was battered on one knuckle;
At every step you missed
My right ear scraped a buckle.

You beat time on my head
With a palm caked hard by dirt,
Then waltzed me off to bed
Still clinging to your shirt.

Yes this is truly a walz, with some slips just like you would imagine a drunk man’s dance. The lighthearted rhythm and the rhymes and slant rhymes contrasts eerily with the subject of abuse.

The feet in the poem above is mostly iambic (da-DAM) with some deviations which means that this is written in iambic trimeter which Frank hosted a while ago, but what counts today is the beat. You can use (again) anapests, a variation. Maybe you can listen to a wiener waltz, and imagine dancing around a ballroom… counting one two three.

Let the dance be your poem, and when it’s written on your blog, with a link back to dVerse you link up at Mr Linky below. Then go around visit, comment and enjoy, The prompt is open until Saturday but you can come and visit whenever you like at a later time.