Attitudes Towards Fathers in Three 20th-Century Poems
This paper examines in detail three poems about fathers by three 20th century poets: Bored by Margaret Atwood, Those Winter Sundays by Robert Hayden and My Papas Waltz by Theodore Roethke. The paper illuminates similarities between the three poems, in that the child is depicted as passive, and the father as active but not necessarily expressive. The attitude towards fathers in these poems is one of unquestionable devotion, but also of regret that the time spent could not have, somehow, been better.