Dana Gioia - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Poetry

It was as a poet that Gioia first began to attract widespread attention in the early 1980s, with frequent appearances in The Hudson Review, Poetry, and The New Yorker. In the same period, he published a number of essays and book reviews. Both his poetry and his prose helped to establish him as one of the leading figures in the New Formalist movement, which emphasized a return to traditional poetic techniques such as rhyme, meter, and fixed form, and to narrative and non-autobiographical subject matter.

As a result, Daily Horoscope (1986), his first collection, was one of the most anticipated and widely discussed poetry volumes of its time. Its contents—like those of the two subsequent collections that Gioia has thus far published—range widely in form, length and theme: traditional forms and free verse; lyrics, meditations, and mid-length narratives; deeply personal poems and poems drawn from myth, history, and the other arts. Among its more notable—and widely reprinted—pieces are “California Hills in August”, “In Cheever Country”, and “The Sunday News”.

The Gods of Winter (1991) is in many ways a deeper and darker book than its predecessor. It contains “Planting a Sequoia”, his most direct engagement of the tragic loss of his infant son, as well as two long dramatic monologues, “Counting the Children”, in which an accountant has a disturbing interaction with a grotesque doll collection, and “The Homecoming”, whose narrator explains his motivations for committing murder and the effects that his violent acts have had upon him. Simultaneously published in Britain, it is one of the few American volumes ever chosen as the main selection of the U.K. Poetry Book Society

Poetry Book Society

The Poetry Book Society was founded by T. S. Eliot and friends in 1953. Each quarter the Society selects one recently published collection of poetry for its members. The Society also publishes the quarterly poetry journal Bulletin, and it administers the competition for the annual T. S. Eliot Prize...

.

Gioia's third collection, Interrogations at Noon (2001) was the winner of the 2002 American Book Award

American Book Award

The American Book Award was established in 1978 by the Before Columbus Foundation. It seeks to recognize outstanding literary achievement by contemporary American authors, without restriction to race, sex, ethnic background, or genre...

. (It is surely no coincidence that each book’s title contains a temporal reference, given the importance of time and its passing as a theme in Gioia’s poetry.) Its varied contents include a suite of translations from the contemporary Italian poet Valerio Magrelli

Valerio Magrelli

Valerio Magrelli is an Italian poet.He graduated in philosophy at the University of Rome and is an expert in French literature which he has taught and teaches at University of Pisa and University of Cassino...

and two excerpts from Gioia’s translation of Seneca

Seneca the Younger

Lucius Annaeus Seneca was a Roman Stoic philosopher, statesman, dramatist, and in one work humorist, of the Silver Age of Latin literature. He was tutor and later advisor to emperor Nero...

’s Hercules Furens, amid many original poems in which contemplative and occasionally wistful notes predominate, as in the concluding stanza of “Summer Storm”: “And memory insists on pining / For places it never went, / As if life would be happier / Just by being different.”

His poetry has appeared in The Norton Anthology of Poetry, The Oxford Book of American Poetry, and many other anthologies. They have been translated into French, German, Italian, Spanish, Russian, Romanian, Bulgarian, Chinese, and Arabic. His poetry has been set to music, in styles ranging from classical to jazz and rock, by—among others—Ned Rorem

Ned Rorem

Ned Rorem is a Pulitzer prize-winning American composer and diarist. He is best known and most praised for his song settings.-Life:...

, Dave Brubeck

Dave Brubeck

David Warren "Dave" Brubeck is an American jazz pianist. He has written a number of jazz standards, including "In Your Own Sweet Way" and "The Duke". Brubeck's style ranges from refined to bombastic, reflecting his mother's attempts at classical training and his improvisational skills...

, Paquito D’Rivera, and Alva Henderson; song cycles based on his poems have been composed by Stefania de Kenessey, Lori Laitman

Lori Laitman

Lori Laitman is one of America's most prolific and widely performed composers of vocal music. She has composed two operas, an oratorio, choral works and over 200 songs, setting the words of classical and contemporary poets, among them the lost voices of poets who perished in the Holocaust...

, and Paul Salerni. Gioia has also written the libretti for the operas Nosferatu (2001; music by Alva Henderson) and Tony Caruso's Last Broadcast (2005; music by Paul Salerni).

Gioia has received ten honorary doctorates, as of 2011. In 2005, Dana Gioia received the John Ciardi

John Ciardi

John Anthony Ciardi was an American poet, translator, and etymologist. While primarily known as a poet, he also translated Dante's Divine Comedy, wrote several volumes of children's poetry, pursued etymology, contributed to the Saturday Review as a columnist and long-time poetry editor, and...

Award for Lifetime Achievement in Poetry. In 2010, Gioia was announced as the year's recipient of the Laetare Medal

Laetare Medal

The Laetare Medal is an annual award given by the University of Notre Dame in recognition of outstanding service to the Roman Catholic church and society...

from the University of Notre Dame

University of Notre Dame

The University of Notre Dame du Lac is a Catholic research university located in Notre Dame, an unincorporated community north of the city of South Bend, in St. Joseph County, Indiana, United States...

, an honor traditionally given to an American Roman Catholic in recognition of outstanding service to the Church and to society. In 2008, Gioia was inducted into the College of Fellows of the Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology

Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology

The Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology is a Roman Catholic college, seminary, and graduate school in Berkeley, California. It is located at 2301 Vine Street in Berkeley....

NEA chairman

Gioia was President George W. Bush

George W. Bush

George Walker Bush is an American politician who served as the 43rd President of the United States, from 2001 to 2009. Before that, he was the 46th Governor of Texas, having served from 1995 to 2000....

's second choice to lead the NEA

National Endowment for the Arts

The National Endowment for the Arts is an independent agency of the United States federal government that offers support and funding for projects exhibiting artistic excellence. It was created by an act of the U.S. Congress in 1965 as an independent agency of the federal government. Its current...

. The first, composer Michael P. Hammond

Michael P. Hammond

Michael P. Hammond was an American musician, educator, and eighth chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts.-Early life:...

, died only a week after taking office as the NEA

National Endowment for the Arts

's eighth chairman in January 2002. Gioia said, "I found an agency that was demoralized, defensive, and unconfident. It had been under constant assault for about fifteen years and it was suffering from the institutional version of battered child syndrome", said Gioia. "I don't think the NEA

National Endowment for the Arts

has done a very good job of serving America," he declared. By bringing a new visibility to the agency and wooing Congressional Republicans, Gioia gained a sizable increase in his agency's budget. "Dana is a superb politician. He knows how to talk to Congress and to the arts community, and to state and federal agencies and to the complex, gigantic, fire-breathing beast called the White House," said David Gelernter

David Gelernter

David Hillel Gelernter is a professor of computer science at Yale University. In the 1980s, he made seminal contributions to the field of parallel computation, specifically the tuple space coordination model, as embodied by the Linda programming system...

of Yale University

Yale University

Yale University is a private, Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States...

. Bill Kauffman

Bill Kauffman

Bill Kauffman is an American political writer generally aligned with the paleoconservative movement. He was born in Batavia, New York, and currently resides in Elba, New York, with his wife and daughter....

called Gioia "the best poet in government service since President Tyler

John Tyler

John Tyler was the tenth President of the United States . A native of Virginia, Tyler served as a state legislator, governor, U.S. representative, and U.S. senator before being elected Vice President . He was the first to succeed to the office of President following the death of a predecessor...

sent John Howard "Home Sweet Home" Payne

John Howard Payne

John Howard Payne was an American actor, poet, playwright, and author who had most of his theatrical career and success in London. He is today most remembered as the creator of "Home! Sweet Home!", a song he wrote in 1822 that became widely popular in the United States, Great Britain, and the...

to Tunis

Tunis

Tunis is the capital of both the Tunisian Republic and the Tunis Governorate. It is Tunisia's largest city, with a population of 728,453 as of 2004; the greater metropolitan area holds some 2,412,500 inhabitants....

."

At the NEA

National Endowment for the Arts

, Gioia created new programs such as Shakespeare in American Communities, bringing the Bard

Bard

In medieval Gaelic and British culture a bard was a professional poet, employed by a patron, such as a monarch or nobleman, to commemorate the patron's ancestors and to praise the patron's own activities.Originally a specific class of poet, contrasting with another class known as fili in Ireland...

to small towns; and NEA Jazz Masters

NEA Jazz Masters

The National Endowment for the Arts , every year honors up to seven jazz musicians with Jazz Master Awards. The National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Masters Fellowships are the highest honors that the United States bestows upon jazz musicians...

, promoting jazz music. The NEA

National Endowment for the Arts

presents an annual award for jazz which Gioia hopes will be the jazz equivalent of a Pulitzer Prize

Pulitzer Prize

The Pulitzer Prize is a U.S. award for achievements in newspaper and online journalism, literature and musical composition. It was established by American publisher Joseph Pulitzer and is administered by Columbia University in New York City...

. "We have a generation of Americans growing up who have never been to the theater, the symphony

Symphony

A symphony is an extended musical composition in Western classical music, scored almost always for orchestra. A symphony usually contains at least one movement or episode composed according to the sonata principle...

, opera

Opera

Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...

, dance

Dance

Dance is an art form that generally refers to movement of the body, usually rhythmic and to music, used as a form of expression, social interaction or presented in a spiritual or performance setting....

, who have never heard fine jazz, and who increasingly don't read," said Gioia in justifying his efforts.

Gioia is not without critics, however. Some in the U.S. Congress,
believe the NEA

National Endowment for the Arts

should be abolished because it exceeds their view of the Constitutional functions of government. Some in the arts community fault the NEA

National Endowment for the Arts

for abandoning grants to individual artists, which were terminated after controversy over Robert Mapplethorpe

Robert Mapplethorpe

Robert Mapplethorpe was an American photographer, known for his large-scale, highly stylized black and white portraits, photos of flowers and nude men...

, Andres Serrano

Andres Serrano

Andres Serrano is an American photographer and artist who has become notorious through his photos of corpses and his use of feces and bodily fluids in his work, notably his controversial work "Piss Christ", a red-tinged photograph of a crucifix submerged in a glass container of what was purported...

, and others, to which Gioia responded, "Fellowships in prose (fiction and creative nonfiction) or poetry are available to published creative writers of exceptional talent." Gioia's new NEA

National Endowment for the Arts

programs, for which NEA has sought corporate and foundation support, worry other arts organizations because the NEA

National Endowment for the Arts

is competing with them for funding.

In July 2004 the NEA

National Endowment for the Arts

released "Reading at Risk" a study showing how little time Americans were dedicating to literature. In 2005 Gioia initiated the "Big Read

Big Read

The Big Read was a survey on books carried out by the BBC in the United Kingdom in 2003, where over three quarters of a million votes were received from the British public to find the nation's best-loved novel of all time...

" program, seeking to get Americans to read serious literature, akin to the city-wide reading programs undertaken by several American cities such as Seattle, Cincinnati and Chicago

Chicago

Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...

. The Big Read eventually became the largest literary program in the history of the federal government, reaching nearly 500 cities across all 50 states. Over 25,000 local organizations, including libraries, museums, newspapers, mayor's offices, and private businesses became partners in the program. It also became a vehicle for international cultural exchange with Big Read programs in Russia, Egypt, and Mexico.

In 2007, Gioia was named the 2007 commencement speaker for his alma mater, Stanford University

Stanford University

The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...

. His selection was a source of controversy between the class of 2007 and the administration. In his commencement address, he lamented the fallout from the dominance of celebrity and fame as societal values: "...we live in a culture that barely acknowledges and rarely celebrates the arts or artists ... When virtually all of a culture's celebrated figures are in sports or entertainment, how few possible role models we offer the young ... There are so many other ways to lead a successful and meaningful life that are not denominated by money or fame. Adult life begins in a child's imagination, and we've relinquished that imagination to the marketplace." Gioia has also written or co-written a number of texts used in college courses, including the anthology (edited with Dan Stone) 100 Great Poets of the English Language (2004). He has authored many essays and reviews.

On November 17, 2008, Gioia was presented with the Presidential Citizens Medal

Presidential Citizens Medal

The Presidential Citizens Medal is the second highest civilian award in the United States, second only to the Presidential Medal of Freedom. It is awarded by the President of the United States, and may be given posthumously....

by President George W. Bush

George W. Bush

Poetry

Daily Horoscope (1986)
The Gods of Winter (1991)
Interrogations at Noon (2001)

Criticism

Can Poetry Matter? (1991)
Barrier of a Common Language: An American Looks at Contemporary British Poetry (Poets on Poetry) (2003)
Disappearing Ink: Poetry at the End of Print Culture (2004)

Translation

Eugenio Montale's Motteti: Poem's of Love (translator) (1990)
The Madness of Hercules (Hercules Furens) (translator). Included in Seneca: The Tragedies, Volume II, published by Johns Hopkins (1995)

Edited

New Italian Poets (editor, with Michael Palma) (1991)
Certain Solitudes: On the Poetry of Donald Justice (editor, with William Logan) (1998)
California Poetry: From the Gold Rush to the Present (California Legacy) (editor, with Chryss Yost and Jack Hicks) (2003)
The Misread City: New Literary Los Angeles (editor, with Scott Timberg) (2003)

Writings about Dana Gioia and his work

April Lindner. Dana Gioia (Boise State University Western Writers Series, No. 143) (2003)
Jack W. C. Hagstrom and Bill Morgan. Dana Gioia: A Descriptive Bibliography with Critical Essays (2002)
Janet McCann, "Dana Gioia: A Contemporary Metaphysics," Renascence 61.3 (Spring 2009): 193-205.

External links

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