Tomorrow, someone I love would have turned 31.
I bought my first Carol Ann Duffy book when he was twenty-three and I was twenty-one and we were friends. He was out in California, studying poetry, and I was visiting Paris, and bought a beautiful paperback version of Ms. Duffy’s Selected Poems at Shakespeare and Co., perhaps the most storied independent bookstore ever, a feast for the imagination of literary types (I also bought Roald Dahl’s Fantastic Mr. Fox, if you were wondering). I bought her Selected Poems because I already loved (and sill do) the sexy, glowing “Warming Her Pearls,” but I didn’t know then that the book will always fall open on another page.
“I want you and you are not here.” That’s the first, plaintive sentence of Carol Ann Duffy’s wonderful poem “Miles Away,” which is about conjuring up the presence of the absent beloved in thought and language. It’s such a perfect rendering of what I felt so keenly for so many months, and still sometimes, that I can only point toward the poem itself:
I have got your mouth wrong,
but still it smiles. I hold you closer, miles away,
inventing love, until the calls of nightjars
interrupt and turn what was to come, was certain,
into memory.
This one’s for you, EVC.
Rosemary and Reading Glasses 
What a beautiful poem! I haven’t heard of this poet before.
Carol Ann Duffy is the poet laureate of Britain (currently, I think). She’s wonderful.
Hmmm, I might even buy a poetry book!
The Selected Poems are great — an excellent sampling of her work.
OK, I will look for them.
Wow…your post and the poem are both beautiful and sad and heartbreaking. I’m so sorry, Carolyn.
Thanks. He was such a lovely person, and such a gifted poet. I miss him.
Sorry for your loss. What a beautiful poem. I like his poem too.
Thanks, Laura. His poems were so good. Maybe next year I’ll post one that he wrote for me.
Wonderful post. Thinking of you!
Thanks on both counts, Katie. 🙂
🙂
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Beautiful post, Carolyn…and I’m sorry for the loss of your friend. Thank you for raising awareness of the beauty poetry brings tour lives and for keeping your friend’s memory and poetic gifts alive.
P.S. I am GREEN with envy that not only did you visit Shakespeare & Co. but you bought books….it’s on my bucket list, girl.
He was my fiance, actually. It was a wonderful thing, to be in love with, and loved by, a poet.
Wow….I’m speechless….there’s a story there, girl…thank you for sharing that tidbit……beautiful and poignant. (hugs)
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