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BBC Radio 3 is a radio channel that started transmitting on the 30th September 1967. It replaced Third Programme.

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The Essay Podcast

The Essay

Discussion & Talk

Factual: Arts, Culture & the Media

Essays from leading writers on arts, history, philosophy, science, religion and beyond.

Leading writers on arts, history, philosophy, science, religion and beyond, themed across a week - insight, opinion and intellectual surprise.

The Essay: Five Poems I Wish I Had Written

The Essay: Five Poems I Wish I Had Written: Episode 5: Robert Frost's 'Design'

Five Poems I wish I had written

Episode 5

Episode 5: Robert Frost's 'Design'

Five Poems I Wish I Had Written

Robert Frost's 'Design'

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Poet Don Paterson reflects on Robert Frost's 'Design'.

Poet Don Paterson reflects with a mixture of admiration and rueful envy on five poems he wishes he had written. Robert Frost's poem 'Design'.

Don Paterson is an award-winning poet, editor and teacher, but for all his technical ability and the recognition that has been paid to his work Paterson is acutely aware of awe and sometimes envy when he looks at the work of other writers. Here he applies his wit and skills of technical analysis to discussing five poems he wishes he had written.
Tonight, Robert Frost's poem 'Design'.

Design

I found a dimpled spider, fat and white,
On a white heal-all, holding up a moth
Like a white piece of rigid satin cloth--
Assorted characters of death and blight
Mixed ready to begin the morning right,
Like the ingredients of a witches' broth--
A snow-drop spider, a flower like froth,
And dead wings carried like a paper kite.

What had that flower to do with being white,
The wayside blue and innocent heal-all?
What brought the kindred spider to that height,
Then steered the white moth thither in the night?
What but design of darkness to appall?--
If design govern in a thing so small.

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Poet Don Paterson reflects on five poems he wishes he had written

Poet Don Paterson reflects with a mixture of admiration and rueful envy on five poems he wishes he had written

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