Poetry was really important to you as a child, which ones and why did it have such an impact? Well one was Longfellow's Higher Wather. As I listened to it the words had a physical effect on me. My skin bristled, my hair stood on it and my heart peed faster. Poetry communicates before it's understood T.S. Eliot said that. And it is the rhythm, the sound of the words, something magic in it.