Like a lot of people I first came across Carol Ann Duffy‘s ‘Words, Wide Night’ as a Poems on the Underground poster. I can remember exactly where I was: on the Jubilee Line between St John’s Wood and Finchley Road. I was travelling alone, and yes, it was night.
I was in that phase of trying to devour as much poetry as my time and income would allow. Finding this poem –and for free!– was a bit like the finger of God worming its way through the network of tunnels and affirming that decision.
In a tiny way, I felt like I had won the lottery.
There is not much to say about the poem that has not already been said on countless other blog posts. Years later I would find an exact description for how it felt, late at night and exhausted, to discover I was no longer alone, in the words of Billy Collins’s ‘Marginalia’: ‘I cannot tell you/how vastly my loneliness was deepened,/how poignant and amplified the world before me seemed’.
But at that moment all I knew was gratitude to this plain-speaking ten-line poem of ordinary words. I felt it was in love with the ‘pleasurable’ ‘singing’ of words as I was, as much as and even more than the ‘you’ of the poem. This felt like the poem’s true revelation and secret.
My hunch is that when poets meet the work of other poets, this is what they are looking for.
You can listen to a reading of ‘Words, Wide Night’ here
from The Other Country (Anvil Press, 1990)
Anthony Wilson 
I felt some goosebumps and just a hint of a tear as I listened to this,,,all personal, nothing to do with your good write about how YOU met this poem.
LikeLike
Glad you liked this one. The Other Country is really a great collection if you do not know it. As ever with thanks
Anthony
LikeLike
Carol Ann Duffy touches the soul.
LikeLike
I love this poem, it’s in her ‘Love Poems’ book as well. Recently I have met poems that have just made me gasp inside from the sheer pleasure of the words. Thank-you.
LikeLike
Thanks so much for this Anne. So pleased you found the poem and the site! As ever with best wishes
Anthony
LikeLike
Thanks for sharing the poem Anthony. I listened to it and read it and will no doubt read it again and again to take it in. I should read more poetry! I remember all those poems on the underground. hardly ever read them.
LikeLike
Hi there and thanks for your kind comment. There is something about finding a poem deep in a tunnel underground, late at night, when it is about love and distance and the pleasurability of finding words to say all of that which is extremely arresting and intoxicating. I’m so pleased I helped you reconnect with that.
As ever with thanks Anthony Anthony Wilson
Love for Now, my memoir of cancer, is availablehere
Riddance, my new book of poems, is availablehere
>________________________________
LikeLike