It isn’t an exercise that makes much sense to try and rank poets in a sort of hierarchy of greatness. Still, the great poets are easily recognizable – in a moment the minds knows, the heart feels, the spirit senses a quality involving silence and attention. Read it, and at once you know the poetry that will last all your life. Among West Indian poets, I have that sense especially about Derek Walcott and Martin Carter and Lorna Goodison.
I also have that sense of greatness about the poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins, of course,