Can Poetry Matter?: Essays on Poetry and American Culture

by Dana Gioia

In 1991, Dana Gioia's provocative essay "Can Poetry Matter?" was published in the Atlantic Monthly , and received more public response than any other piece in the magazine's history. In his book, Gioia more fully addressed the Is there a place for poetry to be part of modern American mainstream culture? Ten years later, the debate is as lively and heated as ever. Graywolf is pleased to re-issue this highly acclaimed collection in a handsome new edition, which includes a new Introduction by distinguished critic and poet, Dana Gioia.

Genres: Poetry, Essays, Nonfiction, Literary Criticism, Writing, Theory, Cultural

256 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1992

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

[Anne White · Rating 4 out of 5]

Four stars because some of it's a bit dated now. But otherwise very educational!

[Leanna · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was an interesting book. First, a tangent: from what I've heard, Gioia is like a poetry Republican. By that I mean (1) he's into connecting to the good ol' regular people with his writing and (2) as a business-man turned poet, he seems to (subtly) advocate for poets having real jobs in the real world instead of this ethereal academic business. I think he also used to work for some conservative organization. Anyway, I have not researched this, so there's a good chance I'm blatantly wrong about all of the above, but I liked the idea of a poetry Republican!

I liked this idea because I have been called conservative regarding my attitude towards poetry. This is the only area where I have ever been called conservative. All this means is that I am quicker to call a poem bad than someone with a more tolerant perspective. (Is tolerant the right way to put it? Maybe more wide-ranging? more open? less discerning? lower standards? Many ways to look at this). During my time at grad school, I've become much more open to different kinds of writing than I was. And I think that is a very good thing. But I still sometimes have the opinion of OMG this is GARBAGE the existence of this kind of poetry and appreciation of it HURTS THE CANON (etc etc). So, yes: more conservative.

But, yeah, about the book: I love some of his arguments. He talks about how poetry should be more "public"—i.e. appeal to people outside the academy. Also, the dialogue about poetry should be more "public"—it should use terminology than any appreciator of culture and art can understand. Poetry should be on par with other kinds of art, and to get it there, we need to remove it from its tower.

After I read this book, I consciously tried to write a poem that would appeal to Gioia's ideal broad audience. The poem actually got sort of political, going farther in this direction than I have before. I also tried to be clearer and more straightforward. I’m not sure how I feel about this poem. On the one hand, it risks sentimentality, much more so than my other poems do, in my opinion. I also missed getting to be indeterminate and playing with and to an audience that I know is obsessed with poetry, and is as (and more) educated than I am in its history, evolution, games, textures, etc. On the other hand, I really like the thought that it could appeal to a broader audience—that any appreciator of art, someone not involved in the debates of meaning-making and hyperintellectual postmodern bibble-babble, could maybe get into this poem. I don’t think this is a mode I will always write in, but I think I may add it to my toolbox of modes!

[Seth Skogerboe · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent, pertinent, practical thoughts on poetry “today” (1992, but nonetheless) and how to keep it meaningful. Dozens of small useful things, such as Gioia's four critical measures of contemporary poets' work (quality, originality, scope, and integrity), the difference between poetic and academic regionalism (rooted in reality of place v. simply from Ireland, the South, or a few other canonized “regions”), and a discourse on sentimentality (art failing to carry the emotional weight the artist intends). Leads to follow on a handful of contemporary poets worth reading (Tom Disch, Donald Justice, and Ted Kooser stood out). I'll return to this one.

[Naomi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Essays on poetry and poetry reviews. I really liked his emphasis on poetry being a part of the everyday human experience and not getting locked up in the insular community of academia. I've got lots of new to me poets to read now!

[Caroline · Rating 3 out of 5]

Because I love graphs, here's a little hedonic calculus. The spike towards the end of the book corresponds to his essay on Elizabeth Bishop.

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Overall, not bad, but not especially insightful. Really, I think this deserves more like a 2.5. The first section of Can Poetry Matter? intrigued me, but I was increasingly disappointed through much of the rest of the book (aka: Gioia's various essays on poets.) He pretty quickly diverts from the question the title raises, but I kept wanting to get back to.

[Jonas Perez · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great work. The first three essays in the book are seriously life changing. They are a raw and poignant assessment of contemporary poetry, and inspiration as to what needs to change. If the book only consisted of those three essays...and the short spots on Ashbury and Atwood, I would've been more than content, five stars. As a book I personally didn't enjoy the poet bios as much as the criticism of poetry itself. Regardless of its preferencial caveats, it is a brave and noble work, saved mainly by the head of three essays. I recommend it to all who ever claim to care about poetry.

[J. Alfred · Rating 3 out of 5]

Dana Gioia says interesting things about contemporary poetry, namely about how there's too much of it to read thoroughly and much of it is bad so who wants to try, it's published by self-interested Creative Writing University programs, and it doesn't actually get to the public. Who, he is happy to remind us, like poetry, if they get ahold of the real thing. There is still a large amount of educated general readers who love TS Eliot, say, and thank goodness.
In addition to this good sense, he woos me by being critically right about Robinson Jeffers and Wallace Stevens, who I love, and having startling things to say about other guys I've wanted to read for a while but now feel happy to not get around to (of James Dickey: "one must have a kind of genius to write this badly").
He also displays enormous reading capacities, not just by the breadth of the poets he touches on (I read a good deal, and I've never heard of half the people he talks about) but his depth of engagement. "After a dozen readings," he says in the midst of one review, as if this is normal reading activity for anyone at any time. (What's the last thing-- any written thing-- you've read ten times or more? I suspect none, unless you're a pretty bookish religious person with a text you're religiously obligated to read.)

[Adam Dupaski · Rating 2 out of 5]

Provocative and fairly incensing, Gioia's calls for a new formalism are meant to be taken as a battle call, either for or against. I am personally against and the titular essay annoyed the hell out of me, but the thought and dialogue it encouraged was invaluable.

[D. · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book helped me pinpoint what it is that I don't like about most modern poetry today: it's not written for a general audience; it's written for other academics and MFAs.

[A. Johnson · Rating 5 out of 5]

A National Treasure. If you have an interest in poetry, this is a must.

[Matt · Rating 3 out of 5]

Gioia’s writing is both bold and hacky, regressive and adventurous. He tends to view his own opinions as essential and inarguable, while setting up straw men as his opponents. But he also has some good ideas and challenging statements to redeem perhaps his most provocative and lasting work.

His unique viewpoint, midway between the academy and the populace, does make for some trenchant insights and valuable critique. But it it a bummer that he’s unable to perceive that his “apolitical” viewpoint (as a straight white American dude) is also a refusal to engage with the inherent political nature of writing and criticism.

[Ryan · Rating 4 out of 5]

An odd mishmash of essays, critiques, and historical analyses, Can Poetry Matter has helped assuage some of my own struggles with the form. It's amazing that this anthology is as old as it is, because the arguments and struggles are still just as central today.

The biggest highlight was the namesake essay, in which current struggles for the form are laid out, and propositions for its resurrection are mapped. I find myself in total agreement with the author more often than not, so this was particularly enjoyable.

[zeLö · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really liked even though I skipped some passages/chapters because it was sometimes a bit too descriptive as I wasnt familair with all the poets listed.
I'm happy to finally read it after years.

I'm convinced that a graphic novel of this essay would definitely great.

[Jesse Boring]

Beautiful explication of poets & poetry. Very much worth!!!

[C.J. · Rating 5 out of 5]

All kinds excellent.

[Stevefk · Rating 2 out of 5]

I thought perhaps I could better appreciate poetry if I read about it a bit. Nope. This book, anyway, did not do that. Turns out reading about poetry is about as bad as reading the actual stuff. Pretentious. This author decries sentiment many times. Too bad, because sentiment is human, and most of the poetry I have read could have been churned out by a machine. This book made me want to run from poetry even more than I did before.

[Stephanie Schultz · Rating 2 out of 5]

I did not actually finish this book. I read the first two essays and cannot read any more. Ten pages into the first chapter I was bored and annoyed by the author's grand sweeping comments about poets.

For example, "The teaching poet finds he or she has very little in common with academic colleagues." What? The author states this opinion and others throughout the book as if they were fact, instead of saying "I think" or "I've noticed this to be true." There are no numbers or statistics to back-up any of these statements, let alone testimonies from teaching poets who actually find this to be true.

The second essay is basically a rant about how the author does not like the current trend (the book was written in 1992) of short poems and that long poems need to make a comeback. Again, an opinion that is not written as an opinion.

Maybe someday I will try to read this book further, but, I doubt it.

[Ashley Cale · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great essays! Dana Gioia is such a talented poet and inspiring champion of literature's place in education and the arts and humanities in general; I emphatically agree that poetry does have, and, must have, a vital place in society. So much of life is of the stuff of the ineffable and it must be worked out through the creative undertakings of the arts to inspire, confound, and inform each generation. In short, he may have been "preaching to the choir," so to speak, but it's worth a read to convince, or re-convince, yourself. The conclusion: poetry matters.

[lucke1984 · Rating 2 out of 5]

I haven't completed this book and likely never will. The title had been on my mind and I hoped to find an answer in these pages. Unfortunately the piece is academic and relegates itself to obscurity by the same means as poetry itself does. In whatever sense this is literary criticism ( which may be, if at all, only a small one) it highlights the fact that, whatever the relevance of poetry, it doesn't matter.

[Kristin · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book starts off great--it's written well, and I think Gioia has a lot of important things to say about poetry and poets. The importance of reading, the importance of readings, the importance of reviewing.

But the book gets misleading; almost 3/4 of it is just reviews and essays he has written about poems and poets. Interesting, but not really what the title advertises. I was let down a bit.

[Barbara · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wish I would have read this in 1992 when it was published, because Gioia's argument has lost its relevancy. Poetry has had a renaissance since the 90's, thank god, and I believe many of the concerns and issues Gioia expresses in the wonderfully written book have been resolved; and Gioia, our National Poet Laurette at that time, did much to change the way poetry is recognized in the U.S. However, this is still a great reference book.

[Mike · Rating 3 out of 5]

I believe that it can. So does Dana. Of course, her explanation is a bit more highbrow and dense than I would have preferred. Which, I suspect, is why so few people these days choose to let poetry matter to them.

[Ashley Booth · Rating 3 out of 5]

Beginning part was great--essays on poets were still interesting but far less than the first part of the book (I wasn't looking for another book of essays on poets). Still worth a read though, for sure.

[Jules · Rating 4 out of 5]

this book gave me hope, to know someone else was thinking of these things even if they are not important to most of the world.

[Christine · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wonderful, critical essays on what it means to be a poet today and issues that plague the "poetry subculture." Also great critical reviews of poets. An absolute must for young poets.

[Matthew · Rating 2 out of 5]

After reading this book, I decided the answer is "No" and went back to happily writing my poetry.

[CLM]

I heard Dana Gioia speak tonight at the JFK Library, and he was delightful (even handled a heckler with aplomb).

[William Torgerson · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book showed me how much I didn't know about poetry. It caused me to be a more determined student while doing an MFA in Creative Writing at Georgia College and State University.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

Although now dated in parts, I found Dana Gioia's Can Poetry Matter? an extremely informative and intellectually stimulating read. I particularly enjoyed the chapters devoted to specific poets.

[Steve · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great set of essays on poetry and modern American poets. Good piece on T S Eliot.