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99 Poems: New & Selected
So much of what we live goes on inside--
The diaries of grief, the tongue-tied aches
Of unacknowledged love are no less real
For having passed unsaid. What we conceal
Is always more than what we dare confide.
Think of the letters that we write our dead.
--"Unsaid"
Dana Gioia has long been celebrated as a poet of profound intelligence and powerful emotion, with lines made from ingenious craftsmanship. 99 Poems: New & Selected for the first time gathers work from across his career, including a dozen remarkable new poems. Gioia has not ordered this selection chronologically. Instead, his great subjects organize this volume into broad themes of mystery, remembrance, imagination, place, stories, songs, and love. The result is a book we might live our lives alongside, and a reminder of the deep and abiding pleasures and reassurances that poetry provides us.
The diaries of grief, the tongue-tied aches
Of unacknowledged love are no less real
For having passed unsaid. What we conceal
Is always more than what we dare confide.
Think of the letters that we write our dead.
--"Unsaid"
Dana Gioia has long been celebrated as a poet of profound intelligence and powerful emotion, with lines made from ingenious craftsmanship. 99 Poems: New & Selected for the first time gathers work from across his career, including a dozen remarkable new poems. Gioia has not ordered this selection chronologically. Instead, his great subjects organize this volume into broad themes of mystery, remembrance, imagination, place, stories, songs, and love. The result is a book we might live our lives alongside, and a reminder of the deep and abiding pleasures and reassurances that poetry provides us.
208 pages, Hardcover
First published March 1, 2016
48 people are currently reading
565 people want to read
About the author
Dana Gioia
171 books118 followersDana 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
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
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 44 reviews
June 10, 2016
I had the amazing experience of attending a poetry reading by Dana Gioia, where he read from this collection. His charismatic presence and his effortless integration of philosophy, theology, and cultural commentary was enriching & inspiring.
November 29, 2016
I really like this poet a lot. he isn't pretentious and you can easily understand him. the poems are relatable and cover all the various emotions. I can't wait to enjoy these poems over and over
July 18, 2016
One of the best overall collections of poems I've read in a while. One of my favorites is titled "Rough Country" -
Give me a landscape made of obstacles,
of steep hills and jutting glacial rock,
where the low-running streams are quick to flood
the grassy fields and bottomlands.
A place
no engineers can master - where the roads
must twist like tendrils up the mountainside
on narrow cliffs where boulders block the way.
Where talk black trunks of lightning-scalded pine
push through the tangled woods to make a roost
for hawks and swarming crows.
And sharp inclines
where twisting through the thorn-thick underbrush,
scratched and exhausted, one turns suddenly
to find and 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.
Dana Gioia, 99 Poems: New & Selected, Minneapolis, Minnesota: Graywolf Press, 2016, p. 40)
A favorite quote from "The Lost Garden" -
The trick is making memory a blessing,
To learn by loss subtraction of desire,
Of wanting nothing more than what has been,
To know the past forever lost, yet seeing
Behind the wall a garden still in blossom. (p. 181)
And from "Being Happy" -
Being happy is mostly like that. You don't see it up close.
You recognize it later from the ache of memory.
And you can't recapture it. You only get to choose
whether to remember or forget, whether to feel remorse
or nothing at all. Maybe it wasn't really love.
But who can tell . . . (p. 182)
Give me a landscape made of obstacles,
of steep hills and jutting glacial rock,
where the low-running streams are quick to flood
the grassy fields and bottomlands.
A place
no engineers can master - where the roads
must twist like tendrils up the mountainside
on narrow cliffs where boulders block the way.
Where talk black trunks of lightning-scalded pine
push through the tangled woods to make a roost
for hawks and swarming crows.
And sharp inclines
where twisting through the thorn-thick underbrush,
scratched and exhausted, one turns suddenly
to find and 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.
Dana Gioia, 99 Poems: New & Selected, Minneapolis, Minnesota: Graywolf Press, 2016, p. 40)
A favorite quote from "The Lost Garden" -
The trick is making memory a blessing,
To learn by loss subtraction of desire,
Of wanting nothing more than what has been,
To know the past forever lost, yet seeing
Behind the wall a garden still in blossom. (p. 181)
And from "Being Happy" -
Being happy is mostly like that. You don't see it up close.
You recognize it later from the ache of memory.
And you can't recapture it. You only get to choose
whether to remember or forget, whether to feel remorse
or nothing at all. Maybe it wasn't really love.
But who can tell . . . (p. 182)
November 24, 2016
Beautifully wrought and precise poetry but very bloodless at times. Some are meant to be Poe-like, but I don't get a chill. Some are melancholy, but I don't feel it. The best sections are III (Remembrance) and IV (Imagination) where emotion begins to come through. He also has a whip-crack jab at MFA programs in My Confessional Sestina (p86).
October 28, 2020
The meta-sestina is hilarious. Lots of insightful poems here, on topics both serious and humorous.
November 11, 2022
I really enjoyed reading this for class and discussing the poems. Definitely my favorite out of the two works we read.
July 7, 2017
I thought this book was light in the shadows of a dead literary culture. I am not a fan of much or any contemporary poetry, for its content not context, but this book was different. Its poetry has a ease and exclusivity that reminds me of Tennyson and Wordsworth. I honestly would have given it only four stars, on the merit of its smaller introductory poems, those of which were honestly hit or miss. But it was the "story's" section of the work that had me enthralled. It was so smooth, and so intriguing and perfectly paced. I loved it. It had a clear "last duchess" appeal. Gioia has done so much for poetry, and the new formalism, I only hope to be inspired by this work and do the same.
July 8, 2017
A collection of 15 new and 84 previously published poems divided into 7 sections: mystery, place, remembrance (related to the death of his firstborn infant son), imagination, love plus poems related to tales & stories and to songs. Many are deeply personal. Among the themes addressed by the poems are California's history, cultural and natural beauty; longing and how love grows and matures between two people; and of course grief.
I loved about 20 of the 99 poems. The imagery and beauty in almost every poem was lovely and memorable.
Dana Gioia is California's Poet Laureate and a university professor.
I loved about 20 of the 99 poems. The imagery and beauty in almost every poem was lovely and memorable.
Dana Gioia is California's Poet Laureate and a university professor.
February 20, 2017
Loved it. Real, earthy, genuine.
September 24, 2016
Although I used to enjoy writing poetry in my young adult years, I've gotten away from it. Hearing this author perform a few of his poems, complete with an introduction to each as to their background reawakened my appreciation. These poems have heart, and if you ever have an opportunity to listen to the author, take it!
March 25, 2016
Very wonderful collection of past works and new poems. I enjoyed them all especially the nature and wilderness selections. Some of these were quite thought provoking, amusing or just interesting to read. A very nice collection. I received this book free for Goodreads as a giveaway drawing prize.
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May 13, 2016Check out our full list of Summer Reads at http://www.worldliteraturetoday.org/2...
October 7, 2017
A fine collection by an exquisite poet, in our time.
September 4, 2019
Full disclosure: Dana Gioia is an articulate and reflective poet.
Full disclosure: If you’re looking for thrills and chills and willowy reveries about eternities of meaning, look elsewhere.
Gioia’s 99 Poems has mostly no-nonsense offerings of thoughtful observations and genuine experiences.
His impact is diminished, I think, by his inescapable sincerity and more than a hint of reserve, or austerity, perhaps it’s the stylized structuring—and he won’t let go of the rhyming thing, which can be a plus or not—let’s face it, rhyming is not intended to set the poet free.
Let’s be fair: Gioia didn’t waste the money his mother gave him for poetry lessons.
For example, his “Cruising with the Beach Boys” is worth at least one re-read, here are excerpts:
“So strange to hear that song again tonight
Traveling on business in a rented car
Miles from anywhere I’ve been before.
…I can’t believe I know the words by heart
And can’t think of a girl to blame them on.
…I thought by now I’d left those nights behind,
Lost like the girls that I could never get…
But one old song, a stretch of empty road,
Can open up a door and let them fall
Tumbling like boxes from a dusty shelf,
Tightening my throat for no reason at all…”
“Cruising…” makes me feel the way anybody would feel if there’s a fresh candy apple to be eaten, and no one to share it with.
Read more of my book reviews and poems here:
www.richardsubber.com
Full disclosure: If you’re looking for thrills and chills and willowy reveries about eternities of meaning, look elsewhere.
Gioia’s 99 Poems has mostly no-nonsense offerings of thoughtful observations and genuine experiences.
His impact is diminished, I think, by his inescapable sincerity and more than a hint of reserve, or austerity, perhaps it’s the stylized structuring—and he won’t let go of the rhyming thing, which can be a plus or not—let’s face it, rhyming is not intended to set the poet free.
Let’s be fair: Gioia didn’t waste the money his mother gave him for poetry lessons.
For example, his “Cruising with the Beach Boys” is worth at least one re-read, here are excerpts:
“So strange to hear that song again tonight
Traveling on business in a rented car
Miles from anywhere I’ve been before.
…I can’t believe I know the words by heart
And can’t think of a girl to blame them on.
…I thought by now I’d left those nights behind,
Lost like the girls that I could never get…
But one old song, a stretch of empty road,
Can open up a door and let them fall
Tumbling like boxes from a dusty shelf,
Tightening my throat for no reason at all…”
“Cruising…” makes me feel the way anybody would feel if there’s a fresh candy apple to be eaten, and no one to share it with.
Read more of my book reviews and poems here:
www.richardsubber.com
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December 29, 2025As someone who is kind of "old school" in their poetic preferences, it was refreshing to read a poet who has stood their ground in some of the more fundamental features of poetry that have made it such a beautiful artform. Gioia gives us well-formed poetry that is rhythmic, musical, and uses clear, powerful language. He demonstrates his skill in his thematic and tonal flexibility, and he is able to make you laugh and cry with words.
If I were to give a critique, I would say Gioia falls into one modern trap: a number of his poems are almost entirely devoid of metaphor. A few times, his poems amount to prose in a poetic structure. He isn't painting a metaphorical picture, he's telling us exactly what happens in certain events and the events don't extend beyond themselves as signs of something more.
That being said, Gioia is very clearly capable of deep metaphor in this collection, and his poems give me hope that all poetry hasn't devolved into critical essays with arbitrary line breaks.
If I were to give a critique, I would say Gioia falls into one modern trap: a number of his poems are almost entirely devoid of metaphor. A few times, his poems amount to prose in a poetic structure. He isn't painting a metaphorical picture, he's telling us exactly what happens in certain events and the events don't extend beyond themselves as signs of something more.
That being said, Gioia is very clearly capable of deep metaphor in this collection, and his poems give me hope that all poetry hasn't devolved into critical essays with arbitrary line breaks.
October 6, 2025
I loved this book of poetry. Shoutout to Zach Busick for picking it because I seriously doubt this would have bubbled up organically for me. I was nervous going in - Would I even be able to understand 10 of the poems? I was very pleasantly surprised.
Gioia does not write the poetry I was expecting. He writes the way poetry should be written (imho). Understandable, rhythmic, evocative. I didn't love every poem in this collection, but I felt and thoroughly enjoyed many. In particular, the Stories and Love sections stood out. I recommend Gioia for anyone unsure or hesitant to pickup a contemporary poetry book.
Gioia does not write the poetry I was expecting. He writes the way poetry should be written (imho). Understandable, rhythmic, evocative. I didn't love every poem in this collection, but I felt and thoroughly enjoyed many. In particular, the Stories and Love sections stood out. I recommend Gioia for anyone unsure or hesitant to pickup a contemporary poetry book.
November 2, 2020
One of the better practitioners of poetry today. Readable, focused, personable rather than personal, intelligent. I believe the poet A.E. Stallings is probably better in meter and rhyme, but Gioia is no slouch, either. I can’t help but also be drawn to his poems because his writing about other poets has always been first-rate. Credit must go to him for his work at the NEA, which made as much difference in the US poetry field as anything else in the past 50 years. The poems reflect his high intelligence and astute observations.
December 29, 2016
The closing poem, "Marriage of Many Years" alone is reason enough to buy this.
The first 2 themes were a little tough for me to connect with but starting with the theme of Remembrance these poems are moving and powerful.
I particularly enjoyed the story poems. These captured whole stories in narrative poem form.
If you do nothing else, go find Marriage of Many Years and read it...it's only 2 stanzas so even if you hate poetry two stanzas is something you can handle.
The first 2 themes were a little tough for me to connect with but starting with the theme of Remembrance these poems are moving and powerful.
I particularly enjoyed the story poems. These captured whole stories in narrative poem form.
If you do nothing else, go find Marriage of Many Years and read it...it's only 2 stanzas so even if you hate poetry two stanzas is something you can handle.
February 23, 2018
Normally, I enjoy poems, but I don't LOVE them because I don't always quite "get" them... But I really liked a lot of these poems! This is probably my favorite book of poems that I've read. The poems were (mostly) short, easy to understand, and relatable. I'd definitely recommend it to poetry lovers, and anyone who doesn't normally read a ton of poems, but can still appreciate them.
Note: I received this book for free through Goodreads Giveaways.
Note: I received this book for free through Goodreads Giveaways.
February 16, 2021
Gioia is an excellent poet, with ways of saying things in an economy of words, that finds you where you live. Which is, of course, what poets do. This is an interesting and engaging volume. I was at first confused as to why he added pithy short stories in a discrete section. Dunno, but they are worth reading, and show what a great writer can do in an economy of words. Top echelon of American poets.
December 1, 2022
Simply lovely. Reverent, down-to-earth, jocular, true. I savored each and every poem over the course of a year and a half, and I permanently dog-eared about 30 pages.
"... And memory insists on pining
For places it never went,
As if life would be happier
Just by being different."
May 2, 2025
Divided into 7 categories by the author. May be the most cogent poetry categorization I have come across. My favorite section was the first - mystery - which was philosophy-as-poetry for me. Compared to the poetry, I was surprised by the radical difference of the 'stories' section - short prose pieces that were haunted as hell.
March 5, 2018
In his distinct voice--strong, assured, nuanced, compassionate--Dana Gioia writes with an intensity that quickly draws the reader into the scene, into the moment, into the feeling. Time and loss, often combining to create love (though love of a longing sort) imbue many of these poems.
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December 21, 2021The poem Summer Storm is phenomenal, but it’s the only one that stuck with me. It’s easily worth the price of the whole collection, though. That said, I did enjoy most all of the poems, but I think I might need to return to these in 5-10 years to be able to relate even more.
December 22, 2021
Surprised me, since he has been "trendy" in Catholic circles and also a professor, I'd made assumptions -- looking for cliche, figured he'd follow accepted format in thinking and presenting, etc. Really good work. Glad I tried it.
October 16, 2017
2 1/2 stars
March 2, 2019
Not all poems resonated with me, but the ones that did really struck a cord.
April 8, 2019
Made me interested in reading his other books.
May 29, 2019
A wonderful collection, makes me want to reread the earlier books. I don’t take to each and every poem, but all are crafted and lovely. I often found myself shuddering and marveling.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 44 reviews