For "My Papa's Waltz" by Theodore Roethke, write an analysis of the poem's use of imagery and/or symbolism.

This poem by Theodore Roethke can be interpreted on two levels. Read literally, it is a poem about a "waltz," or "romp," between a young boy and his father, which the boy finds "not easy." Symbolically, however, the waltz may represent something bigger than itself, with the elements which make the waltz "not easy" for the boy giving us indications of how the boy and his father interact in their wider relationship.
The very first line of the poem serves to support this thesis: the "whiskey on your breath / Could make a small boy dizzy." We know already, then, that the father, intoxicated, has initiated this "waltz" between himself and his son, in which the boy "hung on like death." The dance is not easy for him, nor do we get the sense that there has been a mutual decision to dance. We could interpret this, then, as a suggestion that the father's relationship with whiskey, in the boy's mind, influenced some elements of their relationship, and that the boy perhaps felt that he was forced to simply hang on while his father made decisions about that relationship and its direction.
The imagery in the poem very much enhances the symbolism of the waltz-as-relationship. The two of them "romped," a word which has undertones of something rougher than a dance, "until the pans slid from the shelf." A "romp" is generally defined as rough, energetic play, usually between children. In this instance, it may be that the father does not know his own strength, or that he is so much stronger than his son that the effect of his energetic approach is that "the pans slid from the shelf." The landscape around the two is changed, broken down, by the father's behavior, although there is no suggestion that this is deliberate. The mother's expression, however—which "could not unfrown itself"—suggests disapproval from her: she has observed, perhaps, how the father's behavior affects their son, but does not feel able to interrupt.
The final two stanzas give a hint of something else in the relationship between father and son. The father's hand, which "held my wrist / Was battered on one knuckle." Meanwhile, the sensory image of the father's buckle which "scraped" the boy's ear "at every step you missed" raises the specter of what else the father might use the buckle for. Every time the father missteps, the son suffers a minor pain, but he does not complain. The fact that these are missteps, rather than deliberate, again suggests that the boy does not blame his father entirely; it is carelessness, rather than malice, causing the discomfort. But the interconnection between these missteps and the belt buckle has undertones of corporal punishment: the boy is keenly aware of his proximity to the buckle, as if he has encountered it intimately before.
This man, with his "battered" hands, who "beat time on" his son's head, is not depicted as a villain, but he is strong, capable of missing steps, and overly rough with his child. The "whiskey on his breath" is foregrounded as the first image in the poem, indicating that it is important in the son's memory of his father. If the waltz in the poem symbolizes the relationship with father and son, we can observe that the son feels powerless in it: the waltz is controlled by his whiskey-drinking, mistake-prone father, and the son suffers consequences for his father's mistakes but does not feel able to protest—perhaps because he knows that, at heart, the father genuinely means no malice.