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On Nov 15, 2007, at 5:48 PM, Alastair Wilson wrote:
> I am convinced that the poem "My Boy Jack" has been too closely
> linked with the death of Kipling's son, John.
> As Jim Wise has pointed out, the poem was first published as a
> prefatory poem to Destroyers at Jutland, the third section of Sea
> Warfare - first appearing in the Daily Telegraph on October 19th
> 1916 (Martindell's Bibliography).
I would agree that the poem is clearly not `about' John Kipling in a
literal sense. John is not `Jack', nor did he die at sea. I'm very
interested in the context Mr. Walker pointed out, which makes a lot
of sense.
However, it is worth considering that ``My Boy Jack'' -- much more so
than ``Common Form'' -- _is_ a poem about a father finding solace
after his sons death in pursuit of a noble cause -- the same noble
cause in which John Kipling died. So if we are to look for a clue as
to Mr. Kipling's opinion in the context of ``the books [he] left
behind'', it surely is a good place to start.
There's a very interesting discussion of (the play) ``My Boy Jack''
and other fictional treatments of John Kipling's death in Dorothea
Flothow's paper[1] from this year's conference in Kent -- recently
highlighted by George Simmers in his excellent "Great War Fiction"[2]
blog.
[1] http://www.kipling.org.uk/rg_kent_flothow.htm
[2] http://greatwarfiction.wordpress.com/
- --
Jim Wise
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