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Dana Gioia Biography

Michael Dana Gioia (/ˈdʒɔɪ.ə/; born December 24, 1950) is 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 served as the chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) between 2003 and 2009. Gioia has published five books of poetry and three volumes of literary criticism as well as opera libretti, song cycles, translations, and over two dozen literary anthologies.

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Dana Gioia Quotes

Once an author finishes a poem, he becomes merely another reader. I may remember what I intended to put into a text, but what matters is what a reader actually finds there which is usually something both more and less than the poet planned.

What Matters, May, Remember, Intended, Author

We are not as we were. Death has been our pentecost.

Death, Has Beens, Pentecost

Yet the stones remain less real to those who cannot name them, or read the mute syllables graven in silica. To see a red stone is less than seeing it as jasper metamorphic quartz, cousin to the flint the Kiowa carved as arrowheads. To name is to know and remember.

Cousin, Flint, Metamorphic, Mute, Names, Real

Current Catholic worship often ignores the essential connection between truth and beauty, body and soul, at the center of the Catholic worldview. The Church requires that we be faithful, but must we also be deaf, dumb, and blind? I deserve to suffer for my sins, but must so much of that punishment take place in church?

Punishment, Faithful, Catholic, Blind, Dumb

We offer you the landscape of your birth -- Exquisite and despoiled. We all share blame. We cannot ask forgiveness of the earth For killing what we cannot even name.

Birth, Despoiled, Earth, Killing, Landscape, Names

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.

Culture, Life, Loyal, Retreated, Speak

The purpose of arts education is not to produce more artists, though that is a byproduct. The real purpose of arts education is to create complete human beings capable of leading successful and productive lives in a free society.

Art, Free, Purpose, Real, Successful

Art is an irreplaceable way of understanding and expressing the world.

Art, Expressing, Understanding, World

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.

Dragonflies, Half, Jays, Pieces, Reach, Road

Paradoxically, the simpler poetry is, the more difficult it becomes for a critic to discuss intelligently. Trained to explicate, the critic often loses the ability to evaluate literature outside the critical act. A work is good only in proportion to the richness and complexity of interpretations it provokes.

Critical, Interpretation, Literature, Poetry, Proportion, Work

It seems to me that awakening to the full potential of what your life might be - beyond the possibilities of your own family, your own class, your own race, your own neighborhood - that is one of the great gifts that art affords.

Affords, Art, Class, Neighborhood, Potential, Race

Money. You don't know where it's been, but you put it where your mouth is. And it talks!

Know, Knows, Money, Mouth, Mouths, Talks

How many voices have escaped you until now, the venting furnace, the floorboards underfoot, the steady accusations of the clock numbering the minutes no one will mark. The terrible clarity this moment brings, the useless insight, the unbroken dark.

Clarity, Dark, Moment, Unbroken, Venting, Voice

Poetry is not a creed or dogma. It is a special way of speaking and listening.

Listening, Special, Way, Speaking, Poetry

Everyone enjoys stories of double lives and secret identities. Children have Superman; intellectuals have Wallace Stevens.

Children, Double, Lives, Secret, Secret Identity, Stories

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.

Afterlife, Blessed, California, Clean, Real, Wise

In an age of global standardization, regional voices also remind both writer and reader that no life is lived generically. If the purpose of literature is truly, as the ancients insisted, to instruct and delight, then what better to understand and enjoy than the here and the now ?

Age, Ancients, Literature, Lived, Purpose, Voice

Poetry speaks most effectively and inclusively (whether in free or formal verse) when it recognizes its connection - without apology - to its musical and ritualistic origins.

Apology, Art, Effectively, Poetry, Ritualistic, Verse

In America, the term younger poet is applied with chivalric liberality. It can be used to describe anyone not yet collecting a Social Security pension.

America, Collecting, Describe, Poet, Social, Used

The music that of common speech but slanted so that each detail sounds unexpected as a sharp inserted in a simple scale.

Common, Details, Simple, Sound, Sounds, Unexpected

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