Dana Gioia
Dana Gioia
Michael Dana Gioiais an American poet and writer. He spent the first fifteen years of his career writing at night while working for General Foods Corporation. After his 1991 essay "Can Poetry Matter?" in The Atlantic generated international attention, Gioia quit business to pursue writing full-time. He also served as the chairman of the National Endowment for the Artsbetween 2003 and 2009. Gioia has published five books of poetry and three volumes of literary criticism as well as opera libretti,...
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth24 December 1950
CityHawthorne, CA
Twisting through the thorn-thick underbrush, scratched and exhausted, one turns suddenly to find an unexpected waterfall, not half a mile from the nearest road, a spot so hard to reach that no one comes a hiding place, a shrine for dragonflies and nesting jays, a sign that there is still one piece of property that won't be owned.
Over the past half century, as American poetry's specialist audience has steadily expanded, its general readership has declined. Even if great poetry continues to be written, it has retreated from the center of literary life. Though supported by a loyal coterie, poetry has lost the confidence that it speaks to and for the general culture.
We felt that Random House had a deep commitment to the book.
Reading is declining in every age group, cultural group, every region and income level. Unless something is done, we will continue to see those declines.
We wanted to make sure the program could work as broadly as possible, so we wanted to test it in more challenging markets.
The arts need social recognition. The money will come if people think it's important.
It's important that America recognizes its own great artists while they're still alive.
Art is an irreplaceable way of understanding and expressing the world,
Everyone enjoys stories of double lives and secret identities. Children have Superman; intellectuals have Wallace Stevens.
What we conceal Is always more than what we dare confide. Think of the letters that we write our dead.
We lived in places that we never knew. We could not name the birds perched on our sill, Or see the trees we cut down for our view. What we possessed we always chose to kill. "We claimed the earth but did not hear her claim, And when we died, they laid us on her breast, But she refuses us until we earn Forgiveness from the lives we dispossessed.
My blessed California, you are so wise. You render death abstract, efficient, clean. Your afterlife is only real estate, And in his kingdom Death must stay unseen.
We are not as we were. Death has been our pentecost.
The music that of common speech but slanted so that each detail sounds unexpected as a sharp inserted in a simple scale.