Dana Gioia

Michael Dana Gioia (born December 24, 1950) is an American poet who quit his successful career as a corporate executive to write. Since January 29, 2003, he has been chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, the United States government's arts agency, and has worked to revitalize an organization that had become gun-shy after the bitter controversies that surrounded it in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Gioia has sought to encourage what he calls the only uniquely American form of art, jazz, as well as promoting William Shakespeare and trying to increase the number of Americans reading literature. Before taking the NEA post, Gioia was a resident of Santa Rosa, California.

Writing full time

Since becoming a full-time writer, Gioia has served as vice-president of the Poetry Society of America from 1992 and as music critic for San Francisco magazine from 1997> He also wrote the libretto of the opera Nosferatu (2001).

Related Topics:
Poetry Society of America - 1992 - 1997 - Libretto - Opera - Nosferatu - 2001

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Gioia objects to how marginalized poetry has become in America, faulting university English departments for appropriating the field from the public:

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

:The voluntary audience of serious contemporary poetry consists mainly of poets, would-be poets, and a few critics. Additionally, there is a slightly larger involuntary and ephemeral audience consisting of students who read contemporary poetry as assigned course work. In sociological terms, it is surely significant that most members of the poetry subculture are literally paid to read poetry: most established poets and critics now work for large educational institutions. Over the last half-century, literary bohemia had been replaced by an academic bureaucracy.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

He wrote a book about these issues, Can Poetry Matter? and lectured widely on his thesis, which provokoved a spirited debate on the topic: Fellow poet Donald Hall said "Dana Gioia is full of shit," to cite one strong opinion. The two acclaimed poets have since reconciled their differences.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~