Last Post Flashcards
“He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.”
In an unconventional way, this poem addresses war by avoiding it
Duffy wishes she could erase the trauma of what the soldiers suffered. The poem reverses the war and needless deaths. All of the events are reversed/rewinded like a film
“If poetry could tell it backwards, true, begin”
Beginning with the conjunction ‘if’ establishes a speculative tone and immediately sets out on an imaginative mission to explore ‘what if’
The speaker clearly establishes from the beginning that this is only speculation- while we can imagine what was possible for the unfinished lives that were destroyed by war, we are unable to undo history
Duffy brings in a common war poetry trope- depicting the soldier as an anonymous victim. However, as the poem progresses, the soldier gradually gathers life and an identity
“You walk away; dropped your gun”
Repetition from the previous stanza demonstrates how the soldiers now abandon the patriotic principles that characterised their involvement in war. The language used by the speaker makes it seem easy to do so, illustrating again how this is an idealised version of events
Verb demonstrates the soldiers rejecting the brutality and violence of war
Extensive enjambment throughout this stanza reinforces the outpouring of possibilities that are now opened up to the soldiers due to the speaker’s rewriting of history
“You see the poet tuck away his pocket-book and smile.”
Duffy said of this image “In a way it’s an attempt at healing and being one with the world.”
In this new reality, there is no need for the poet to document the horrors of war as, in this poem, they will not unfold
Perhaps this is Wilfred Owen smiling, glad to survive and thrive, no longer obliged to write at all
