The Rhetoric of Explanation in Lucretius' De Rerum Natura

This site has a brief review of the above book: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/…018401E33F97963

The book itself is well beyond my budget.

Reading the free sample on Amazon of the book mentioned by Joshua at the recent Zoom meeting, I came on this quote:

“While Epicurus scorned poetry as frivolous, Lucretius believed Epicurean philosophy needed poetry’s explanatory and persuasive power to be understood and embraced, and he justifies his choice to write in verse with a robust defense of natural philosophical poetry.”

– Jesse Hock, The Erotics of Materialism: Lucretius and Early Modern Poetics.

I seem to recall some discussion on here (maybe re Philodemus' treatise on poetry) about whether Epicurus' was a general dismissal of poetry per se, or whether he was reacting to the superstitious nature of such Greek poetry of his time, as in Homer.

I think you're right about Philodemus' relevance to the question, Pacatus , but I'll have to look for it after work!

I think this might have been the thread: Introduction---Joshua's Notes on "The Good Poem According to Philodemus", by Michael McOsker

I also found this review of another overly-expensive book: https://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/1997/1997.02.12/

Disclosure: I’ve never been a big fan of didactic poetry (no real justification: de gustibus non est disputandum). But I am getting some renewed interest here in the role that lyric verse might play in that context. Partly, I have Kalosyni to thank for that: her introduction of Omar Khayyam into Epicurean consideration a while back led me to 1) buy new copies of the Rubaiyat (kindle and paperback) to keep by my side, and 2) to explore, just a bit, Fitzgerald’s steadfast belief that Khayyam – far from being a Sufi – was really an Epicurean (at least in spirit).

So now I may be finding new ways to look at Lucretius …