The main style or technique I gathered from this poem was the desire for simplicity. Roethke is talented, and as such could have really gone on about the descriptions, the settings, and his working class father. The way it was written reflects the man this story is about, his father. It is simple, to the point, a working poem for a working class guy. Roethke doesn't explain his father as the blue collar type, but shows us in the descriptions. The battered knuckle, the buckles, and his palm laced with dirt.
He describes his father simply, as I think the writer slowly reveals to us his father, description by description. The iambic rhythm also reflects his father, as the simple rhyming and lines explains to us the reader what is going on. I think the author wrote this poem very direct and simple so that his own father could read it and understand it with ease. I'm not sure the poem is in tact with the rhythm of the waltz, because a man dancing with a child is rarely in a flowing rhythm. I don't think the focus is on the waltz, but on the man, the father.
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I think you have offered a thoughtful and interesting interpretation of this poem, Brandon. I like the emphasis you take on the father, and on the poem being simple. I happened to think the poem took on the rhythm of the waltz in a subtle way, but that's just me :) Good work.
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