I don't want to cut off discussion, but here's what Snodgrass writes about this poem, in the introduction to the "Metrics & Music" section of the book:
"A student once observed that Roethke's 'My Papa's Waltz' has a 'waltzing rhythm.' This is suggested both by the poem's subject and by the iambic meter that usually produces a triple (3/4 or 3/8) rhythm. Roethke's skillful variations of stress as well as his slanted rhymes (dizzy/easy, pans/countenance) give his waltz a slightly tipsy feeling. My first de/composition changes the emotional coloring of the interplay between father and son, though it maintains the rhythm; the second keeps, when possible, the original's chief nouns and verbs but drives out any suggestion of rhythmic movement."
Having read that last sentence, I understand why that second rewrite sounds so very inept. If the goal is to keep most of the words but to mess up the meter, the easiest way is to overstuff the lines with little, needless words:
You beat time on THE TOP OF my head...
Then waltzed me STRAIGHT off to MY OWN bed...
And the next easiest way is to subtract or switch the position of stresses:
With [a] one palm's caked [hard by] dirt....
For me, full end rhyme paired with failed meter always evokes Ogden Nash, and that's part of the reason that this second rewrite feels like comedy to me, an effect Susan mentions above.
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