California Poetry: From the Gold Rush to the Present

by Dana Gioia

A comprehensive survey of California poetry over the past 150 years California From the Gold Rush to the Present is a groundbreaking new book presenting the work of 101 writers, the first historical anthology to provide a comprehensive survey of California poetry. An authoritative yet accessible collection, it brings together 150 years of the finest California poetry by authors of all schools and ideas. California Poetry also reveals the state's rich cultural and environmental legacy, from the early days of Spanish settlers to the more recent emergence of the Asian and Latino a reflection of lives closely tied to mountains, deserts, verdant valleys, and the vast shoreline of the Pacific Ocean.

Genres: Poetry

640 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 2003

About the author

Dana Gioia is an internationally acclaimed and award-winning poet. Former Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, Gioia is a native Californian of Italian and Mexican descent. He received a B.A. and a M.B.A. from Stanford University and an M.A. in Comparative Literature from Harvard University. (Gioia is pronounced JOY-uh.)

Gioia has published four full-length collections of poetry, as well as eight chapbooks. His poetry collection, Interrogations at Noon, won the 2002 American Book Award. An influential critic as well, Gioia's 1991 volume Can Poetry Matter?, which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle award, is credited with helping to revive the role of poetry in American public culture.

Gioia's reviews have appeared in many magazines including The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The Washington Post Book World, The New York Times Book Review, Slate, and The Hudson Review. Gioia has written two opera libretti and is an active translator of poetry from Latin, Italian, and German.

As Chairman of the NEA, Gioia succeeded in garnering enthusiastic bi-partisan support in the United States Congress for the mission of the Arts Endowment, as well as in strengthening the national consensus in favor of public funding for the arts and arts education. (Business Week Magazine referred to him as "The Man Who Saved the NEA.")

Gioia's creation of a series of NEA National Initiatives combined with a wider distribution of direct grants to reach previously underserved communities making the agency truly national in scope. Through programs such as Shakespeare in American Communities, Operation Homecoming: Writing the Wartime Experience, NEA Jazz Masters, American Masterpieces, and Poetry Out Loud, the Arts Endowment has successfully reached millions of Americans in all corners of the country.

The Big Read became the largest literary program in the history of the federal government. By the end of 2008, 400 communities had held month-long celebrations of great literature. Because of these successes as well as the continued artistic excellence of the NEA's core grant programs, the Arts Endowment, under Chairman Gioia, reestablished itself as a preeminent federal agency and a leader in the arts and arts education.

Renominated in November 2006 for a second term and once again unanimously confirmed by the U.S. Senate, Dana Gioia is the ninth Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts.

Gioia left his position as Chairman on January 22, 2009. In 2011 Gioia became the Judge Widney Professor of Poetry and Public Culture at the University of Southern California where he teaches each fall semester.

Gioia has been the recipient of ten honorary degrees. He has won numerous awards, including the 2010 Laetare Medal from Notre Dame. He and his wife, Mary, have two sons. He divides his time between Los Angeles and Sonoma County, California

Reviews

[Erin]

i hope the librarians forgive me for dog earing a couple pages in the book i borrowed. i really hate doing it, but i used up my last post-it's trying to leave myself reminders that mother's day is tomorrow. it didn't work, by the way. sorry mom. your getting an e-card again.

but i had to dog ear a couple pages. this book is just chock full of freaking amazing poems from all over the place. now, poetry is poetry, and trying to review it is way more pointless than reviewing books and a thousand times more pointless than reviewing art. it either speaks to you or it doesn't.

but if there's a little bit of something for everyone, you know you have a fantastic collection on your hands. it's exactly like golden corral. for those of you that don't know, that's a chain of buffets on the east coast. like hometown buffet in CA, which i hear is its completely horrible west coast compatriot, but at which kids eat for 1.99 on tuesdays. anyway, there's everything from your typical main courses, which are like contemporary and traditional, to salads (sonnets) and a soft serve ice cream machine (free verse). even a couple servings of the healthy stuff that you have to eat but really regret in the end (haiku).

i want to sell this to you by sharing on of the pieces that were really emotional, something completely heart stopping, but that'd ruin the surprise of discovering the last slice of cheesecake or a crispy chicken leg tucked into the pages of this book.

so i'll just share this one, by Larry Levis. amazing guy, i'd judge, just by this...

"The Poem You Asked For" pg 266

My poem would eat nothing.
I tried giving it water
but it said no,

worrying me.
Day after day,
I held it up to the light,

turning it over,
but it only pressed its lips
more tightly together.

It grew sullen, like a toad
through with being teased.
I offered it all my money,

my clothes, my car with a full tank.
But the poem stared at the floor.
Finally I cupped it in

my hands, carried it gently,
out into the soft air, into the
evening traffic, wondering how

to end things between us.
For now it had begun breathing,
putting on more and

more hard rings of flesh.
And the poem demanded the food,
it drank up all the water,

beat me and took my money,
tore the faded clothes
off my back,

said Shit,
and walked slowly away,
slicking its hair down.

Said it was going
over to your place.





***

Isn't that fantastic?!?! And you thought you were the only one who teased toads when you were smaller.

[Cathy · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you are a Westerner, even better a Californian, this is the one poetry book you must own. The editors survey poets who wrote and lived in California (Most were born somewhere else) from the Gold Rush to the 21st century. In addition to samples of their work, there is a short essay about each of the included writers, giving insight into them and into their place in the world of letters. Some, like Joaquin Miller or Ambrose Bierce, are bigger-than-life characters I had heard about before picking up this book. But I frankly admit I'd never heard of Kenneth Rexroth who was a literary mentor to Kerouac, Ginsberg, and Felinghetti and now considered the center for the San Francisco Renaissance that fostered the Beat Generation but who was snubbed by the Eastern Establishment as a writer who just wrote about trees and rocks. He wrote about Yosemite, but also wonderful love poems and held strong political opinions and a bad drinking habit. It's going to take me years to actually read this whole book because every few pages I discover a new poet I'd never head of and tromp off deep into the stacks of the Stanford Library to find their work. My most recent expedition uncovered Ina Coolbrith who wrote 19th century descriptions of nature and also a poem about a controversial exhibit at the Chicago World's Fair. When Joaquin Miller went off to Europe to become the toast of cafe society, he had lost touch with his Indian wife and so dumped his daughter on Coolbrith who raised the girl. Stanford had one volume of her work, printed in 1895 - Songs from the Golden Gate.

[Chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

I decided to put this on the "Read" shelf, though poetry collections are books I return to over and over, finding freshness each time. Every Tuesday I read poetry to my 95-year-old aunt. We can get pretty rangy from classics to modern. This book has given us much food for thought with its chronology of California writers (from the Gold Rush to 2004), decent biographies with the selections and a wide variety of voices. I have looked at everything in this book, but each visit brings a different poet to the fore or even a different take on the same work. As they say, you never step into the same river twice.

[Madhusree · Rating 5 out of 5]

A good selector California poets with short biography & a couple examples of their work.

[Hayley Stone · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent collection of formal and free verse that really captures the spirit of the state and its inhabitants. Some of my favorites include: "Dead in the Sierras" by Joaquin Miller, "The Years" by Ina Coolbrith, "Girl Help" by Janet Lewis, and "First Poem for You" by Kim Addonizio.

[Prisoner 071053 · Rating 3 out of 5]

A pretty good anthology. Plenty of good poets but the usual trash mixed in. The little bios that precede the poems make it even easier to skip the trash: as soon as I read that Soandso Poet was a checkbox, I skipped their poems. And of course you can always spot the crap free verse that announces itself as such by its idiotic page setting.