Will asked the same questions as many times as he’d read the verse. What did Keats want to do, why would it take so many years, and what the hell ever got done just because a guy decided to overwhelm himself in poetry called by an old fashioned word?

Reading poetry on the page is nice, Will. But it’s not all it could be. Reading it aloud—or hearing it read—gives it another dimension. It’s as though vocalizing the words completes the poem.

Poetry can be a peculiar gateway, Will. It can be a way into all kinds of things that don’t seem to have a way in, or that we don’t even know we want in.

Touch has a memory," Will. Your man Keats said that. Did he, now? Will looked up.He did. If it had fit into his poem, I think he would have said taste and smell and sound have a memory, too.Say more.What more is there to say? He said what I've been saying. Aesthetics matter. Place matters. Our senses remember and replay these things back to us, to our fingers, or our nostrils, or our tongues."(Conversation between Will and Joe.)

Poetry could surely slow a guy down.

Keats, Mr. Phillips? Am I to believe you were on my roof reading John Keats?