When I was in high school, there was an advanced placement exam to get into the AP English track.  The exam included Theodore Roethke’s poem, “My Papa’s Waltz.”  We were graded on our interpretation of it.  There was a right answer.  I suspect we were not graded on how convincing or eloquent our interpretations were if they were indeed wrong.  I thought that was the point of writing, that everyone interprets what he or she will. 

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.

Don’t misinterpret this: I love Philip.  He is my waltz.  We are together and happy.  I’m not saying anything more about it.  I misinterpreted the poem and was denied AP placement.  Instead, I joined SWS, took AP classes and placed out of first-year college English.  They were wrong not to let me into the class.  I was wrong because I thought the poem was violent.  I thought the bit of him still left on his father’s shirt was blood.  I got it wrong, and I suspect people get me wrong, too.