Papa - T

• Poet

  Fred D’aguiar
• redcoats tin-soldiering it 


  compound verb, childlike response, reduces soldiers to toys, insult for British soldiers
• picked off one by one

  By poison-tipped blow-darts


  Repetition adds rhythm and shows weakness, imagery, confusing own heritage with the war
• He’d cut short to shout


  sibilance, harsh ‘t’ consonant, reflects the way generals spoke to papa-t
• his consonants stretched past recall,

  Into a whale’s crying place


  metaphor, ocean semantic field
• sweet seasalter


  sibilance, endearing term for papa-t
• It has me itching to bring him reeling-off in that tongue-


  metaphor, endearing
• Structure

  Free verse, intertextual of Tennyson’s TCOTLB, title is for his grandfather or Tennyson
• their drums‘ panicky rattle, their bugler’s yelp,

  Musket–clap and popping cannons


  listing, sensory language, onomatopoeia, contrast to Tennyson’s “thundering”
• I goin ge yu a good lickin 


  colloquial language, patois, reflection of British empire’s treatment of guyanese, contrast to Tennyson’s traditional English/poetry, alliteration
• Noble six hundred: to hear, to disobey.


  last line, caesura creates contrast of Tennyson and D’aguiar’s beliefs, shows poet won’t accept British narrative of the battle