A Poet Reflects on Our Times | Ann Applegarth | Catholic World Report
Dana Gioia’s new collection of poetry is a finely crafted consideration of the true and the beautiful.
When Dana Gioia (pronounced JOY-uh) was appointed Judge Widney Professor of Poetry and Public Culture at the University of Southern California, the position he now holds, David St. John of USC described his new colleague as “partly an old-fashioned storyteller and partly a metaphysical poet of reflection and devotion.”
In Pity the Beautiful, Gioia’s long-awaited fourth volume of poems, the poet wears both hats with grace. The 32 poems manage to soar toward the tip of heaven while remaining firmly grounded in the daily lives and loves of real and imaginary people who populate his poetic earth.
During the years in which he became a widely published poet, essayist, translator, critic, and editor, Gioia also achieved success as a businessman. After earning BA and MBA degrees from Stanford University and an additional MA in comparative literature from Harvard University, he worked for General Foods, becoming vice-president in charge of marketing for the Jell-O and Kool-Aid accounts. He resigned his corporate position in 1992 to write full-time.
In 1991, Gioia gained international prominence with publication in the Atlantic of his seminal essay “Can Poetry Matter?”, a persuasive argument that poetry is essential to an educated society. A year later, his book by the same title continued to fuel a return to poetry as the property of all the people and not exclusively that of academic specialists.
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