Dana Gioia

Dana Gioia (born December 24, 1950, Hawthorne, California, U.S.) is an American poet, poetry and music critic, and former corporate vice president of General Foods known best for his critical essay “Can Poetry Matter?” and for his arts activism. As a poet, he was associated with New Formalism—a shift in American poetry, beginning in the 1980s, from free verse to traditional forms.

Gioia earned a B.A. (1973) in poetry at Stanford University and later went on to complete an M.A. in comparative literature at Harvard University in 1975. He then returned to Stanford for an M.B.A. (1977) and took a job with General Foods in White Plains, New York, where he eventually rose to the position of vice president. While working at General Foods he also wrote poetry and essays for various magazines, notably The New Yorker and The Hudson Review. It was then that the poet-businessman wrote his first book of verse, titled Daily Horoscope (1986), including the acclaimed poem “Cruising with the Beach Boys.” That poem recounts a middle-aged man’s nostalgia for a time long past, doing so in a simple, frank, and poignant manner. Gioia is known for working with a broad range of subjects that span the years from his youthful experiences of life on the California coast to the quotidian suburban existence of middle age. His poetry experiments with rhyme, style, metre, and various other formal techniques.

In May 1991 Gioia contributed to The Atlantic Monthly the controversial article “Can Poetry Matter?” In it he questioned the state of poetry’s readership and proposed ideas to revive public interest in poetry in general. His assertion that poetry was being read only by scholars caused debate among literary circles as to the role of poetry in the 21st century. He published The Gods of Winter, a collection of poems, in 1991 and a year later left the corporate world to focus on poetry and writing. In 1997 he became the music critic for San Francisco magazine, a position he held until about 2003.

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He wrote another notable essay,“Fallen Western Star,” for the 1999–2000 issue of Hungry Mind Review. His main argument in that piece centred on the dissolution of the San Francisco Bay area as a major literary capital, and it caused at least as much controversy as “Can Poetry Matter?” The discourse surrounding the status of California as a literary centre became so heated that poet Jack Foley published The “Fallen Western Star” Wars: A Debate About Literary California (2001), which captures the essay’s impact on the literary world. Gioia came to be recognized as a significant literary activist and critic.

In 2003 Gioia was chosen to head the National Endowment for the Arts, an organization that, among other things, creates channels through which communities and students are exposed to poetry. He remained in that position until January 2009. He cofounded two literary conferences, one of which (“Teaching Poetry,” in Santa Rosa, California) focused on improving methods of teaching poetry to high-school students.

Gioia authored three books of criticism: Can Poetry Matter? Essays on Poetry and American Culture (1992), Barrier of a Common Language: An American Looks at Contemporary British Poetry (2003), and Disappearing Ink: Poetry at the End of Print Culture (2004). He also wrote such opera librettos as Nosferatu (1998) and Tony Caruso’s Final Broadcast (2008). Gioia’s poetry collections included Interrogations at Noon (2001), which won the American Book Award in 2002; Pity the Beautiful (2012); and 99 Poems (2016). He became a professor of poetry and public culture at the University of Southern California in 2011, and in 2015 he was named state poet laureate of California, a post he held until 2018.