George Bilgere Poetry Analysis

One among the universal themes in poetry or literature in general is family conflict. For Theodore Roethke, George Bilgere, and Raymond Carver, the difference between a good parental role model and a flawed role model is what creates conflict between parents and children. Each poem, “My Papa’s Waltz,” “Like Riding a Bicycle,” and “Photograph of My Father in his Twenty-Second Year” all focus on a toxic father-son relationship. Major images that describe the dysfunctional father-son relationships are fears of a drunken father, pretense, and regret. In addition, these poems imply that fathers or parents in general, often pass their flawed parenting styles down to their children. In “My Papa’s Waltz,” Theodore Roethke created an adult speaker

The use of the first line “I would like to write a poem,” Bilgere allows the reader to infer that it is the poet himself speaking in first person. The poem can be attributed to real life instances. “About how my father taught me/To ride a bicycle one soft twilight,/A poem in which he was tired/ And I was scared, unable to disbelieve/In gravity and believe in him, (lines 2-6,)” brings in a certain bitterness brought on by the memory of his father. The son-father relationship is very unbalanced. “Of-course, he was drunk that night (line 24),” and “He swore and stomped off (line 35),” the reader can sense the negativity surrounding his father. It gives the idea of Bilgere being abandoned by his drunken father to tend to his father’s own divorce with the mother. “On their own divorce, their balance/Long gone and the hard ground already/Rising up to smite them (lines 38-40),” the alcoholism eventually destroyed the family as well. Nonetheless, he had to learn by himself the way of life, “Alone down the neighborhood’s/ Black street like the lonely western hero/ I still catch myself in the act/ Of performing (lines 45-48).” Now that the poet is a lot older and despite the circumstances he went through with his father, he was able to grow on his own. The reader is able to feel the shift of tone through-out the poem more

Carver creates a person who is looking at a photograph of his father. He forms a man struggling with alcoholism. “October./Here in this dank, unfamiliar kitchen ( line 1),” I have the idea that adds a gray, chill to the poem. “I study my father’s embarrassed young man’s face (line 2),” describing perhaps the father being embarrassed of himself for letting the drinking get so bad. The father tries his best to appear confident and bold in the picture, for example, his “Sheepish grin, he holds in one hand a string/of spiny yellow perch, in the other/A bottle of Carlsbad Beer (lines 3-5).” This also shows the father’s effort to appear manly and bold, since both fishing and drinking beer are probably viewed as evoking such. The father “ In jeans and denim shirt, he leans/Against the front fender of a 1934 Ford/He would like to pose a bluff and hearty for his posterity,/Wear his old hat cocked over his ear (lines 6-9),” all make the father appear self-assured. However, on the contrary, the narrator sees that the father is not truly confident or manly. “But the eyes give him away, and the hands/ that limply offer the string of death perch (lines 11-12),” expose his true character. He is not acting as himself, but is pretending to be someone he isn’t. Finally, the son (or narrator) admits that he too, had an alcohol problem just like his dad