Dana Gioia

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.

Dana Gioia
Born (1950-12-24) December 24, 1950
Hawthorne, California, U.S.
OccupationWriter, critic, poet, businessman
NationalityAmerican
Alma materStanford University (B.A.)
Harvard University (M.A.)
Stanford Business School (M.B.A.)
Notable awardsPresidential Citizens Medal (2008)
Laetare Medal (2010)
RelativesTed Gioia
Website
www.danagioia.com

Gioia is the Judge Widney Professor of Poetry and Public Culture at the University of Southern California, where he teaches, as well as a Senior Fellow at the Trinity Forum.[1] In December 2015 he became the California State Poet Laureate.[2]

Early years

Michael Dana Gioia was born in Hawthorne, California, the son of Michael Gioia and Dorothy Ortez. Of Italian and Mexican descent, Gioia grew up in Hawthorne, "speaking Italian in a Mexican neighborhood".[3] He attended Catholic schools for twelve years, including Junipero Serra High School in Gardena.[4] His younger brother is jazz and blues historian Ted Gioia.[5][6]

Gioia was the first person in his family to go to college and earned a Bachelor of Arts from Stanford University in 1973, a master's degree from Harvard University in 1975, and a Master of Business Administration from Stanford Business School in 1977. As both a graduate and undergraduate, Gioia was editor of Stanford's literary journal the Sequoia Magazine.[7]

Business career

Gioia joined General Foods in 1977, where he eventually became vice president of marketing. He was on the team that invented Jell-O Jigglers[8] and is credited with helping reverse a long-running sales decline for Jello.[9] In 1992, Gioia resigned from his position as a vice president at General Foods to pursue a full-time career as a poet.

Writing

Although Gioia writes in both free and formal verse, he is usually classified as one of the "New Formalists", who write in traditional forms and have declared that a return to rhyme and more fixed meters is the new avant-garde. He is a particular proponent of accentual verse.[10] While working at General Foods, Gioia wrote in the evenings, producing several books of poetry and translation.

Gioia has written several collections of criticisms. In his 1991 essay "Can Poetry Matter?" Gioia objects to how marginalized poetry has become in America.[11]

Gioia has written or co-written over two dozen literary anthologies and college textbooks, including An Introduction to Poetry (with X. J. Kennedy). He has also written many essays and reviews. He also wrote a column for San Francisco magazine as their music critic.

Poetry

It was as a poet that Gioia first began to attract attention in the early 1980s, with appearances in The Hudson Review, Poetry, and The New Yorker. In the same period, he published a number of essays and book reviews.

Daily Horoscope (1986), his first collection, was one of the most anticipated and widely discussed poetry volumes of its time. Its contents range widely in form, length and theme. Among its more notable—and widely reprinted—pieces are "California Hills in August", "In Cheever Country", and "The Sunday News".

The Gods of Winter (1991), his second collection contains "Planting a Sequoia" about the tragic loss of his infant son, as well as the long dramatic monologues, "Counting the Children", in which an accountant has a disturbing interaction with a grotesque doll collection, and "The Homecoming", in which a murderer explains his motivations for returning home to commit one more murder. Simultaneously published in Britain, it was chosen as the main selection of the U.K. Poetry Book Society.

Interrogations at Noon (2001), Gioia's third collection, was the winner of the 2002 American Book Award. It includes both translation and many original poems in which contemplative and occasionally wistful notes predominate, as in the concluding stanza of "Summer Storm": "And memory insists on pining / For places it never went, / As if life would be happier / Just by being different." His poem "Words" explores the power and limits of language to understand the world. Many of the other poems examine the lives of poets, painters, and composers.

Pity the Beautiful (2012) marked Gioia's return to poetry after his term in public office as chairman of the NEA. As with his previous books of poetry, it featured both metrical verse and free verse. "Special Treatments Ward" garnered notice for its description of a pediatric cancer ward. "Haunted", the central poem in the collection, is a long dramatic monologue that is both love story and ghost story.

99 Poems: New & Selected (2016) collects his old poems along with several new poems. It was the winner of the 2018 Poets' Prize.

In December 2015, Gioia was named Poet Laureate of California. Gioia intended to visit each of the state's 58 counties and give a poetry reading.[12][13] Gioia emphasized visiting smaller and mid-sized communities, saying,

My life changed for the better by falling in love with poetry. It made me a better student, made me a more alert human being. And I'd like to try to bring the gifts of poetry to the broadest audience possible.[14]

Gioia's poetry is anthologized in The Norton Anthology of Poetry, The Oxford Book of American Poetry, and several other anthologies. His poems have been translated into French, German, Italian, Spanish, Russian, Romanian, Bulgarian, Chinese, and Arabic.

Music and opera

Gioia has collaborated with musicians including Ned Rorem, Lori Laitman, Morten Lauridsen, Paul Salerni, Alva Henderson, David Conte, Tom Cipullo, Stefania de Kenessey, and John Harbison. His jazz collaborators include Dave Brubeck, Paquito D'Rivera, and Helen Sung.

Gioia has written three opera libretti. His first opera, Nosferatu, with music by Alva Henderson, was jointly premiered by Rimrock Opera and Opera Idaho in 2004.[15] His second libretto, Tony Caruso's Final Broadcast, with music by Paul Salerni, won the National Opera Association award for best new chamber opera and was premiered in Los Angeles in 2008.[16] Both of these works have been recorded. His latest opera, The Three Feathers, with music by Lori Laitman, was premiered by Virginia Tech and Opera Roanoke in 2014.[17]

NEA chairman

In 2002, Gioia was nominated as NEA Chairman by President George W. Bush. Gioia served as chairman from 2003 to 2009, and worked to bring new visibility to the agency through a series of national initiatives that stressed broad democratic reach and artistic excellence.

With the support of both Congressional Democrats and Republicans, Gioia gained a $20.1 million increase[18] in his agency's budget and for the remainder of his tenure, silenced the perpetual requests from conservatives to defund the agency. In November 2006, Business Week magazine profiled Gioia as "The Man Who Saved the NEA".[19] Five years after Gioia left office, The Washington Post referred to him as one of "two of the NEA's strongest leaders".[20]

While Chairman, Gioia created several national initiatives each around a specific art. "We have a generation of Americans growing up who have never been to the theater, the symphony, opera, dance, who have never heard fine jazz, and who increasingly don't read," said Gioia,[21] in justifying his efforts to bring large scale national initiatives of artistic excellence to millions of Americans. The New York Times columnist William Safire referred to Gioia's NEA national initiatives as "A Gioia to Behold".[22] His program "Shakespeare in American Communities" gave grants to more than 40 American theatre companies to tour small and medium-sized communities.[23] His program The Big Read aimed to increase literacy across America. Based on the "one city, one book" concept, The Big Read brought together partner organizations across the country to encourage entire communities to read the same book. It was launched as a pilot program with ten communities in 2006, and went national in 2007, eventually becoming the largest literary program in the history of the federal government.[24]

In 2006, Gioia created Poetry Out Loud, a national poetry recitation contest for students. Each year, some 375,000 students participate, beginning at the high school classroom level. Classroom winners advance to school-wide recitation competitions, and school champions advance to regional and state competitions, and ultimately to the National Finals in Washington, DC. The winner receives a $20,000 scholarship.[25]

Gioia also re-energized the NEA Jazz Masters, which is the nation's highest honor in jazz music, in order to raise the visibility of artists who he felt were undervalued in their own country.

Gioia's term as NEA Chairman coincided with the peak of U.S. involvement in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. During that time, Gioia worked to include the military and military families in NEA national initiatives. He expanded his "Shakespeare in American Communities" program to include tours to military bases. The NEA also sent young artist programs from opera companies around the country to military bases with the Great American Voices Military Base Tour.[26] In 2004, Gioia launched Operation Homecoming: Writing the Wartime Experience, which collected writings from U.S. troops and their families about their wartime experiences in Afghanistan, Iraq, and stateside. Many of the writings were collected in the anthology Operation Homecoming. The anthology was named one of the "Best of 2006" non-fiction by The Washington Post. A documentary based on Operation Homecoming, produced by the Documentary Group, was nominated for a 2006 Academy Award.

Gioia stepped down from the NEA in January 2009 to return to poetry.[27][28]

Honors and awards

In 2007, Gioia gave the commencement speech for his alma mater, Stanford University: National Public Radio included that speech on its list of "The Best Commencement Speeches, Ever", dating back to 1774.[29]

Personal life

On February 23, 1980, he and Mary Elizabeth Hiecke were married. They had three sons, one of whom died in infancy. His poem "Planting a Sequoia" is based on his experience of losing his infant son.

Books

Poetry
  • Daily Horoscope (1986)
  • The Gods of Winter (1991)
  • Interrogations at Noon (2001)
  • Pity the Beautiful (2012)
  • 99 Poems: New & Selected (2016)

Criticism
  • Can Poetry Matter? (1991)
  • Barrier of a Common Language: An American Looks at Contemporary British Poetry (Poets on Poetry) (2003)
  • Disappearing Ink: Poetry at the End of Print Culture (2004)
  • Que reste-il-de la poésie ? (Can Poetry Matter ? translate by Renaud Toutlemonde), Paris, Allia, 2021, 64 p

Translation
  • Eugenio Montale's Motteti: Poem's of Love (translator) (1990)
  • The Madness of Hercules (Hercules Furens) (translator). Included in Seneca: The Tragedies, Volume II, published by Johns Hopkins (1995)

Opera libretti
  • Nosferatu (2001)
  • Tony Caruso's Last Broadcast (2005)
  • The Three Feathers (2014)

Edited
  • "Poems from Italy" (editor, with William Jay Smith) (1985)
  • New Italian Poets (editor, with Michael Palma) (1991)
  • Certain Solitudes: On the Poetry of Donald Justice (editor, with William Logan) (1998)
  • California Poetry: From the Gold Rush to the Present (California Legacy) (editor, with Chryss Yost and Jack Hicks) (2003)
  • The Misread City: New Literary Los Angeles (editor, with Scott Timberg) (2003)
  • Twentieth-Century American Poetry (editor, with David Mason and Meg Schoerke) (2004)
  • "The Art of the Short Story" (editor, with R. S. Gwynn) (2006)
  • An Introduction to Poetry, 13th edition(editor, with X.J. Kennedy) (2010)

Contributor
  • My California: Journeys by Great Writers (contributor / 2004)
  • This Man's Army. A War in Fifty Sonnets by John Allan Wyeth (introduction/2008)

Writings about Dana Gioia and his work
  • Matthew Brennan. Dana Gioia. A Critical Introduction. (Story Line Press Critical Monographs) (2012)
  • April Lindner. Dana Gioia (Boise State University Western Writers Series, No. 143) (2003)
  • Jack W. C. Hagstrom and Bill Morgan. Dana Gioia: A Descriptive Bibliography with Critical Essays (2002)
  • Janet McCann, "Dana Gioia: A Contemporary Metaphysics", Renascence 61.3 (Spring 2009): 193-205.
  • Michael Peich. Dana Gioia and Fine Press Printing (Kelly/Winterton Press0 (2000)

See also

Notes
  1. "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2011-10-02. Retrieved 2011-06-26.CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  3. Pulliam, Russ. "WORLD Magazine: Modern man of letters". WorldMag.com. Archived from the original on 2013-02-09. Retrieved 2010-07-18.
  4. Gioia, Dana; Wares, Donna, "Being a California Poet", My California: Journeys by Great Writers, archived from the original on 2007-07-29
  5. "Page Not Found". alumni.stanford.edu. Archived from the original on 2007-04-29. Retrieved Dec 25, 2020. Cite uses generic title (help)
  6. "About Dana Gioia – Dana Gioia". danagioia.com. Retrieved Dec 25, 2020.
  7. Hagstrom, Jack W. C.; Morgan, Bill (2002). Sequoia: Stanford literary magazine. ISBN 9780965882651. OCLC 637602563.
  8. Goodyear, Dana (February 19, 2007), "The Moneyed Muse: What can two hundred million dollars do for poetry?", The New Yorker
  9. Christy Spackman (August 17, 2012). "Mormonism's Jell-O Mold". Slate.com. Retrieved August 17, 2012.
  10. "Accentual verse", Dana Gioia
  11. "Can Poetry Matter? - 91.05". www.theatlantic.com. Retrieved 2016-07-23.
  12. "To rhyme's no crime, says poet Dana Gioia". Retrieved 2016-07-23.
  13. "Hitting the Road With California's Poet Laureate". 2016-07-10. Retrieved 2016-07-23.
  14. "Poet and former NEA chair Dana Gioia named California poet laureate". Retrieved 2016-07-23.
  15. "Albany Records: Nosferatu". www.albanyrecords.com. Retrieved Dec 25, 2020.
  16. "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2016-06-02. Retrieved 2015-07-30.CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  17. Eisenberg, Susan Dormady (Oct 14, 2014). "Lori Laitman and Dana Gioia Talk About Their New Opera, Opening This Week at Virginia Tech". HuffPost. Retrieved Dec 25, 2020.
  18. "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2012-09-25. Retrieved 2013-08-23.CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  19. "The Man Who Saved the NEA". Nov 13, 2006. Retrieved Dec 25, 2020 – via www.bloomberg.com.
  20. Kennicott, Philip (May 20, 2014). "The Great Society at 50: Lyndon B. Johnson's cultural vision mirrored his domestic one". Retrieved Dec 25, 2020 – via www.washingtonpost.com.
  22. Safire, William (2004-03-08). "A Gioia To Behold". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2016-07-23.
  23. "NEA". Archived from the original on 2013-02-23. Retrieved 2013-08-23.
  25. "Features". Retrieved Dec 25, 2020.
  26. "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2013-09-14. Retrieved 2013-08-23.CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  27. Trescott, Jacqueline (2008-09-12). "Arts Agency Chairman Is Moving On". The Washington Post. ISSN 0190-8286. Retrieved 2016-07-23.
  28. "Gioia Leaves NEA After Changing Debate Over Arts Funding - The New York Sun". www.nysun.com. Retrieved 2016-07-23.
  29. "The Best Commencement Speeches, Ever". Retrieved March 15, 2015.

References
  • American Perspectives. C-SPAN. February 21, 2004. (Presentation of talk Gioia gave at the Agassi Theatre, Harvard University, February 9, 2004).
  • Cynthia Haven. "Dana Gioia Goes to Washington". Commonweal. November 21, 2003.
  • Cynthia Haven. "Poet Provocateur", Stanford Magazine, July/August 2000.
  • Belinda Lanks. "Bush Picks Poet for NEA", ARTnews December 2002
  • John J. Miller. "Up from Mapplethorpe". National Review. March 8, 2004.
  • Jim Milliot. "Gioia vows to change America's reading habits." Publishers Weekly. June 27, 2005.
  • "Reviving the Bard" (editorial). The New Criterion. December 2003.
  • Bruce Weber. "Poet Brokers Truce in Culture Wars." The New York Times. September 7, 2004.
  • World Authors 1990–1995. New York: H. W. Wilson, 1999
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