I think the first little jolt I got was reading Gerard Manley Hopkins - I liked other poems... but Hopkins was kind of electric for me - he changed the rules with speech, and the whole intensity of the language was there and so on.
I don't believe that poetry is in danger because nobody wants to read it or appreciate it. There is a tremendous audience for it on any given day or night. You just have to know where to look.
I like it when someone gives me a new book of poetry by a poet I haven't read.
I am not sure that the discovery of love is necessarily more exquisite than the discovery of poetry.
It was in a stonecutter's house where I went to have a headstone made for Raftery's grave that I found a manuscript book of his poems, written out in the clear beautiful Irish characters.
It makes me happy to meet other poetry fans. Especially when they recommend poets I'm not familiar with.
The world is full of poetry as the earth is of pay-dirt; one only needs to know how to strike it.
