Hello and welcome to Frank Skinner's Poetry Podcast. I'd like to talk to you today

about an American poet called Rita Dove. Rita Dove is a former American poet laureate or the equivalent of the poet laureate and also winner of the Pulitzer Prize for poetry.

So she's doing all right, Rita.

I'd like to talk about a poem from 1989 of Rita Dobbs,

called Ars Poetica Arse Poetica.

Arse Poetica for you Latin scholars

I guess you know that it means the art of poetry.

There's been a few of these written as you can imagine over the years with people offering their views on what poetry is and what it should be.

You could say if you really wanted to stretch the terminology that this podcast is an arse poetica, but let's not do that.

And the first one I know of was written by the Roman poet Horace.

His was quite prescriptive and he talked a lot about how a poet should operate.

Rita Dolph's artetica is much more over there than over here if you know what I mean it's not it's much less direct

And you have to kind of find out what Rita's getting that with a with a poetical

series. It begins. This is the first line of Rita Dobbs, R's poetica.

30 miles to the only decent restaurant.

It's quite an opening, isn't it? And interestingly, I don't know how influence she has been by the Roman poet Horace,

but in that last poetica of his, One of the things he says is that never begin as he called it

Ab Ovo. So if you're telling a story never begin Ab Ovo meaning with the egg.

Don't start right at the very very beginning.

Jump in to the narrative and let the listener, let the reader, let the listener, the reader, let the audience member if some of the stuff he talks about is dramatic poetry.

Let them find their way and Rita Dove does exactly this 30 miles to the only decent restaurant and

the word decent I think grabs you immediately whoever the speaker is in this, it's someone who doesn't like

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