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Disappearing Ink: Poetry at the End of Print Culture
The Celebrated poet and author of Can Poetry Matter? offers another bold, insightful collection of essays on literature's changing place in contemporary culture Poetry is an art that preceded writing, and it will survive television and video games . . . The problem won't be finding an audience. The challenge will be writing well enough to deserve one. In Disappearing Ink , Dana Gioia stakes the claim for poetry's place amid American popular culture, where poetry in its latest oral forms -rap, slam, performance-is transforming the traditional literary culture of the printed page. But, as the seminal title essay asks, "What is a conscientious critic supposed to do with an Eminem or Jay-Z?" In a brilliant array of essays that test the pulse of traditional and contemporary poetry, Gioia ponders the future of the written word and how it might find its most relevant incarnation. With the clarity, wit, and feisty intelligence that made Can Poetry Matter? one of the most important and controversial books about literature and contemporary American society, Gioia again demonstrates his unique abilities of observation and uncanny prognostication to examine our complicated everyday relationship to art.
304 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2004
2 people are currently reading
73 people want to read
About the author
Dana Gioia
172 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 - 5 of 5 reviews
November 22, 2019
This work is more than the title suggests. One essay speaks of printed poetry vs. performance poetry, rap, etc. The rest of the essays do an incisive job of covering and explaining the work of many poets: Robert Frost, Weldon Kees, Elizabeth Bishop, William Everson, Longfellow, James Tate---to name several. The author gives poem excerpts and biographical info. What the volume amounts to is an excellent appreciation of American poetry. It is educational and will likely inspire you to read some of the poets discussed.
August 31, 2021
Fantastic essay collection on print, poetry, and persiflage.
December 19, 2013
I came to read this book in a roundabout way. I had never heard of Dana Gioia until I read a poem of his in Garrison Keillor’s WRITER’S ALMANAC which appears in my e-mail box every day; some of these poems are excellent, some forgettable. Gioia’s “The Lost Garden”, about memory and what we make of the past fell into my excellent category, and that got me interested in Gioia. I found several of his poetry collections in the library as well as this collection of essays which were surprisingly interesting.
Is poetry disappearing? The lead piece says that printed poetry may well be in a permanent state of feebleness. It appeals to a very small group of readers, but that doesn’t mean poetry is dead. Rather, it has become popular in oral forms such as cowboy poetry, poetry slams, and especially rap. It is true that the decline of print culture has been hard on literary poets who have no way of reaching a wide audience, assuming that there even is such an audience. But oral performance poetry is thriving and Gioia thinks this is simply reaffirming what a dramatist like Shakespeare knew centuries ago – poetry has to be heard to be appreciated, and as long as it talks about the important things of life there is an audience for it.
The longest piece in the collection is about Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and the precipitous decline of his literary reputation. He was the most popular American poet who ever lived, becoming rich from the sale of his books and in the 19th century his extraordinary cultural influence, Gioia says, was close to what today would be the impact of popular music and movies. He was astonishingly prolific, writing short lyric poetry as well as long historical narratives such as EVANGELINE and HIAWATHA (so popular it was translated into every European language, as well as into Latin). He was a master of intricate metrical forms and was was one of the first to combine his writing talents with academia and became a prototype of the poet/professor, today the only way a print poet can make a living.
What happened to Longfellow’s reputation? He was a victim of Modernism which in literary terms loved contradiction, intensity, compression, elliptical expression. Longfellow had none of these, and worse, he had a tendency toward didacticism, anathema to modern critics and readers who find this kind of poetry as offering sugar-coated pills of “truth”, not much above banal greeting card verse. However, as Gioia astutely points out, didacticism hasn’t disappeared from popular culture – it has simply shifted into self-help books and is now more popular than ever. So, Longfellow has been banished, and the l9th century poet now favored is Emily Dickenson, a non-entity in Longfellow's era.
Most of the rest of the book is made up of shorter pieces assessing individual poets. His comments got me interested in a few I had not heard of or had forgotten about. Among them: Elizabeth Bishop, Randall Jarrell, James Tate, Weldon Kees, William Jay Smith. He has a intriguing piece on Robert Frost, the split between his actual life, and his poetry. He concludes that as long as poetry speaks to, and celebrates, the concerns of everyday life, whatever its form, there will always be an audience for it.
Is poetry disappearing? The lead piece says that printed poetry may well be in a permanent state of feebleness. It appeals to a very small group of readers, but that doesn’t mean poetry is dead. Rather, it has become popular in oral forms such as cowboy poetry, poetry slams, and especially rap. It is true that the decline of print culture has been hard on literary poets who have no way of reaching a wide audience, assuming that there even is such an audience. But oral performance poetry is thriving and Gioia thinks this is simply reaffirming what a dramatist like Shakespeare knew centuries ago – poetry has to be heard to be appreciated, and as long as it talks about the important things of life there is an audience for it.
The longest piece in the collection is about Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and the precipitous decline of his literary reputation. He was the most popular American poet who ever lived, becoming rich from the sale of his books and in the 19th century his extraordinary cultural influence, Gioia says, was close to what today would be the impact of popular music and movies. He was astonishingly prolific, writing short lyric poetry as well as long historical narratives such as EVANGELINE and HIAWATHA (so popular it was translated into every European language, as well as into Latin). He was a master of intricate metrical forms and was was one of the first to combine his writing talents with academia and became a prototype of the poet/professor, today the only way a print poet can make a living.
What happened to Longfellow’s reputation? He was a victim of Modernism which in literary terms loved contradiction, intensity, compression, elliptical expression. Longfellow had none of these, and worse, he had a tendency toward didacticism, anathema to modern critics and readers who find this kind of poetry as offering sugar-coated pills of “truth”, not much above banal greeting card verse. However, as Gioia astutely points out, didacticism hasn’t disappeared from popular culture – it has simply shifted into self-help books and is now more popular than ever. So, Longfellow has been banished, and the l9th century poet now favored is Emily Dickenson, a non-entity in Longfellow's era.
Most of the rest of the book is made up of shorter pieces assessing individual poets. His comments got me interested in a few I had not heard of or had forgotten about. Among them: Elizabeth Bishop, Randall Jarrell, James Tate, Weldon Kees, William Jay Smith. He has a intriguing piece on Robert Frost, the split between his actual life, and his poetry. He concludes that as long as poetry speaks to, and celebrates, the concerns of everyday life, whatever its form, there will always be an audience for it.
October 8, 2008
Just an outstanding book about the disappearance of poetry in this now digital age. A must read...
April 20, 2014
A nice selection of essays on poetry. The one on Longfellow is worth ghe book.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews