Last Post (poem)
Encyclopedia
Carol Ann Duffy
Carol Ann Duffy, CBE, FRSL is a Scottish poet and playwright. She is Professor of Contemporary Poetry at the Manchester Metropolitan University, and was appointed Britain's poet laureate in May 2009...
, the Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom
Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom
The Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom, also referred to as the Poet Laureate, is the Poet Laureate appointed by the monarch of the United Kingdom on the advice of the Prime Minister...
, in 2009. It was commissioned by the BBC to mark the deaths of Henry Allingham
Henry Allingham
Henry William Allingham was a British supercentenarian, First World War veteran and, for one month, the verified oldest living man in the world...
and Harry Patch
Harry Patch
Henry John "Harry" Patch , known in his latter years as "the Last Fighting Tommy", was a British supercentenarian, briefly the oldest man in Europe, and the last surviving soldier to have fought in the trenches of the First World War...
, two of the last three surviving British veterans from the First World War
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
, and was first broadcast on the BBC Radio 4
BBC Radio 4
BBC Radio 4 is a British domestic radio station, operated and owned by the BBC, that broadcasts a wide variety of spoken-word programmes, including news, drama, comedy, science and history. It replaced the BBC Home Service in 1967. The station controller is currently Gwyneth Williams, and the...
programme Today
Today programme
Today is BBC Radio 4's long-running early morning news and current affairs programme, now broadcast from 6.00 am to 9.00 am Monday to Friday, and 7.00 am to 9.00 am on Saturdays. It is also the most popular programme on Radio 4 and one of the BBC's most popular programmes across its radio networks...
on 30 July 2009, the date of Allingham's funeral.
The poem, named after the Last Post
Last Post
The "Last Post" can be either a B♭ bugle call within British Infantry regiments or an E♭ cavalry trumpet call in British Cavalry and Royal Regiment of Artillery used at Commonwealth military funerals and ceremonies commemorating those who have been killed in war.The two regimental traditions have...
(the bugle call used at British ceremonies remembering those killed in war), makes explicit references to Wilfred Owen
Wilfred Owen
Wilfred Edward Salter Owen MC was an English poet and soldier, one of the leading poets of the First World War...
's poem from the First World War Dulce et Decorum Est
Dulce et Decorum Est
Dulce et Decorum est is a poem written by poet Wilfred Owen in 1917, during World War I, and published posthumously in 1920. Owen's poem is known for its horrific imagery and condemnation of war. It was drafted at Craiglockhart in the first half of October 1917 and later revised, probably at...
. It imagines what would happen if time ran backwards and those killed in the war came back to life; their lives would still be full of possibilities and filled with "love, work, children, talent, English beer, good food." The poem was generally well received, with one commentator saying that it was "simply a damn good poem with rich imagery, cinematic movement and poignant ending." Another said that it was "moving reversal of history" and a "fine poem". Duffy herself was quoted as saying that she wanted to honour the tradition of poets who were soldiers.
Commission
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Carol Ann Duffy
Carol Ann Duffy, CBE, FRSL is a Scottish poet and playwright. She is Professor of Contemporary Poetry at the Manchester Metropolitan University, and was appointed Britain's poet laureate in May 2009...
was appointed as Poet Laureate
Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom
The Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom, also referred to as the Poet Laureate, is the Poet Laureate appointed by the monarch of the United Kingdom on the advice of the Prime Minister...
in May 2009, the first woman to be appointed to the post. She was asked by the BBC Radio 4
BBC Radio 4
BBC Radio 4 is a British domestic radio station, operated and owned by the BBC, that broadcasts a wide variety of spoken-word programmes, including news, drama, comedy, science and history. It replaced the BBC Home Service in 1967. The station controller is currently Gwyneth Williams, and the...
programme Today
Today programme
Today is BBC Radio 4's long-running early morning news and current affairs programme, now broadcast from 6.00 am to 9.00 am Monday to Friday, and 7.00 am to 9.00 am on Saturdays. It is also the most popular programme on Radio 4 and one of the BBC's most popular programmes across its radio networks...
to write a poem to mark the deaths of Henry Allingham
Henry Allingham
Henry William Allingham was a British supercentenarian, First World War veteran and, for one month, the verified oldest living man in the world...
and Harry Patch
Harry Patch
Henry John "Harry" Patch , known in his latter years as "the Last Fighting Tommy", was a British supercentenarian, briefly the oldest man in Europe, and the last surviving soldier to have fought in the trenches of the First World War...
. The poem was read by Duffy on Today on 30 July 2009, the day of Allingham's funeral. Allingham, who served with the Royal Naval Air Service
Royal Naval Air Service
The Royal Naval Air Service or RNAS was the air arm of the Royal Navy until near the end of the First World War, when it merged with the British Army's Royal Flying Corps to form a new service , the Royal Air Force...
before becoming a founder member of the Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force
The Royal Air Force is the aerial warfare service branch of the British Armed Forces. Formed on 1 April 1918, it is the oldest independent air force in the world...
, died on 18 July 2009 at the age of 113; Patch, the last surviving man to have fought in the trenches in the war, died on 25 July 2009 at the age of 111. Their deaths left Claude Choules
Claude Choules
Claude Stanley Choules was the last World War I combat veteran, and was the last military witness to the scuttling of the German fleet in Scapa Flow. He was also the last veteran to have served in both world wars, and the last seaman from the First World War...
, who served in the Royal Navy
Royal Navy
The Royal Navy is the naval warfare service branch of the British Armed Forces. Founded in the 16th century, it is the oldest service branch and is known as the Senior Service...
during the war and now lives in Australia, as the last surviving British veteran.
Duffy said that she felt that she should "honour that great tradition of poets who were also soldiers", describing the poem as "an attempt at healing and being at one with the world", and "a tribute and blessing, even an apology, on behalf of poetry and all poets." She added that she "had been thinking about Afghanistan and trying to enthuse new war poetry among contemporary poets." The poem was broadcast one week after Duffy published a selection of poems she had commissioned from poets such as Sean O'Brien
Sean O'Brien (writer)
Sean O'Brien is a British poet, critic, playwright. Prizes he has garnered include the Eric Gregory Award , the Somerset Maugham Award , the Cholmondeley Award , the Forward Poetry Prize and the T. S. Eliot Prize...
, Paul Muldoon
Paul Muldoon
Paul Muldoon is an Irish poet. He has published over thirty collections and won a Pulitzer Prize for Poetry and the T. S. Eliot Prize. He held the post of Oxford Professor of Poetry from 1999 - 2004. At Princeton University he is both the Howard G. B. Clark ’21 Professor in the Humanities and...
and Daljit Nagra
Daljit Nagra
Daljit Nagra is a British poet whose debut collection, Look We Have Coming to Dover! — a title alluding to W. H. Auden's Look, Stranger!, D. H. Lawrence's Look! We have come through! and by epigraph also to Matthew Arnold's 'Dover Beach' — was published by Faber in February 2007...
about the ongoing war in Afghanistan
War in Afghanistan (2001–present)
The War in Afghanistan began on October 7, 2001, as the armed forces of the United States of America, the United Kingdom, Australia, and the Afghan United Front launched Operation Enduring Freedom...
.
Poem
The poem takes its title from the bugle call used at British ceremonies remembering those killed in war, the Last PostLast Post
The "Last Post" can be either a B♭ bugle call within British Infantry regiments or an E♭ cavalry trumpet call in British Cavalry and Royal Regiment of Artillery used at Commonwealth military funerals and ceremonies commemorating those who have been killed in war.The two regimental traditions have...
. It begins with two lines from the poem Dulce et Decorum Est
Dulce et Decorum Est
Dulce et Decorum est is a poem written by poet Wilfred Owen in 1917, during World War I, and published posthumously in 1920. Owen's poem is known for its horrific imagery and condemnation of war. It was drafted at Craiglockhart in the first half of October 1917 and later revised, probably at...
by the First World War poet Wilfred Owen
Wilfred Owen
Wilfred Edward Salter Owen MC was an English poet and soldier, one of the leading poets of the First World War...
:
In all my dreams, before my helpless sight
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.
The title of Owen's poem is part of a line from the Roman poet Horace
Horace
Quintus Horatius Flaccus , known in the English-speaking world as Horace, was the leading Roman lyric poet during the time of Augustus.-Life:...
– ("It is sweet and fitting to die for one's country"). The phrase was inscribed over the chapel door at Sandhurst
Royal Military Academy Sandhurst
The Royal Military Academy Sandhurst , commonly known simply as Sandhurst, is a British Army officer initial training centre located in Sandhurst, Berkshire, England...
, the British military academy, in 1913. The phrase is again referenced when Duffy writes "Dulce — No — Decorum — No — Pro patria mori." The writer Will Heaven said that, whilst the poem denies that death in war is "sweet and proper" (dulce et decorum), it does not deny that the soldiers died for their country (pro patria mori).
The heart of the poem depicts events "if poetry could tell it backwards" – soldiers who died in the war coming back to life, "lines and lines of British boys rewind / back to their trenches". The poem imagines "all those thousands dead / are shaking dried mud from their hair / and queuing up for home". Duffy pictures what would have happened to them if they had not died:
You lean against a wall,
your several million lives still possible
and crammed with love, work, children, talent, English beer, good food.
before adding, "You see the poet tuck away his pocket-book and smile". Erica Wagner
Erica Wagner
Erica Wagner is an American author and critic, living in London. She is the literary editor of The Times.-Biography:Erica Wagner was born in New York City in 1967. She grew up on the Upper West Side and went to the Brearley School...
, the literary editor of The Times
The Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
, said that the poet Duffy refers to in the poem could be Owen, but could also be John McCrae
John McCrae
Lieutenant Colonel John Alexander McCrae was a Canadian poet, physician, author, artist and soldier during World War I and a surgeon during the Second Battle of Ypres...
, Isaac Rosenberg
Isaac Rosenberg
Isaac Rosenberg was an English poet of the First World War who was considered to be one of the greatest of all English war poets...
, or Charles Hamilton Sorley, or one of a number of other poets from the war. Wagner also noted that "Harry Patch and Henry Allingham escaped death, but never the effect of that awful war."
Reaction
The poem received a generally favourable critical reaction. Wagner called it a "moving reversal of history", a "fine poem", and "the latest in a noble line of work [about the First World War] that aspires to a kind of salvation." Heaven said that it was a "poignant and beautiful tribute" to Allingham. It has been called "sombre yet supremely uplifting". The poem was also noticed in the United States. Jenna Krajeski, a writer for The New YorkerThe New Yorker
The New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons and poetry published by Condé Nast...
, described it as "another strong at-bat", and said that the poem highlighted "the power, but also the shortcomings, of poetry" when writing about an "imaginary, impossible event" and also writing about writing about it. The American poet John Lundberg said that the poem was a "surprising success", adding that not only was it "accessible" and "a fitting tribute to those who served in World War I," but also "simply a damn good poem with rich imagery, cinematic movement and poignant ending." However, Christopher Howse, a writer for the Daily Telegraph, took a different view of the poem's merits, saying (under the title "Carol Ann Duffy falls short of Henry Allingham") that Duffy's verse form was "open, to the point of invisibility".
See also
- "Harry Patch (In Memory Of)Harry Patch (In Memory Of)"Harry Patch " is a song by the English alternative rock band Radiohead. The band wrote and recorded the song as a tribute to the British supercentenarian Harry Patch, the last surviving soldier to have fought in the trenches during World War I...
", a tribute song by RadioheadRadioheadRadiohead are an English rock band from Abingdon, Oxfordshire, formed in 1985. The band consists of Thom Yorke , Jonny Greenwood , Ed O'Brien , Colin Greenwood and Phil Selway .Radiohead released their debut single "Creep" in 1992... - 2009 in poetry2009 in poetryNationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:* January 5 – The Turkish government announces it will posthumously restore the citizenship it had stripped from influential poet Nazim Hikmet, a Marxist who died in 1963 as an exile in the Soviet...