Memory of the past The past memories Parenting is very important in shaping ones future. Children never forget what they have gone through in their lives and therefore parents should taken caution of their action. The poems titled, “My Papa’s Waltz” (1948) by Theodore Roethke, “Photograph of my Father in his Twenty-Second Year” (1983) by Raymond Carver and “The courage that my mother had” (1954) by Edna St. Vincent Millay reflects on the poets’ relationships with their parents when they were kids. Reading through them expresses how each of the poets was trying to assess the essential relationships in their own childhood through exploration of the meaning of their interactions with the parents. This paper explains how in each poem a sense of loss or disappointment and a sense of anger is analyzed. The different poets were considering the ways in which his or her father or mother betrayed them. The following is analysis of each of the above mentioned poems