A Poet Like Me with Anna J. Small Roseboro, April 12, 2024

We chose a poet from among those born in the same month to inspire our poetry today. I chose a striking line for my golden shovel from a new-to-me poem Rita Dove’s “Ars Poetica”: “What I want is this poem to be small.”

Ars Poetica

What a poem needs
I don’t presume to know, but I
want it to brandish truth.
Is that fair to ask?
This fearful world needs a
poem to smack us alive,
to resuscitate trust, to
be a balm for large (even
small) wounds of our soul.