Can Poetry Matter?: Essays on Poetry and American Culture [Paperback]

Dana Gioia (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1, 2002

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 question: 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.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"No one, I think, has written with greater clarity or greater poignancy-or with a greater sense of urgency, either-about the 'subculture' in which the art of poetry is still confined...." --Hilton Kramer, The New Criterion

"Can Poetry Matter? is an important book, and anyone who professes to care about the state of American poetry will have to take it into account." --World Literature Today

"If you're an educated general reader, and you read only one book about contemporary poetry, this should be that book." --Booklist

About the Author

An acclaimed poet, essayist, anthologist, BBC commentator, and critic, Dana Gioia is also the author of, most recently, Interrogations at Noon, a collection of poems that received the American Book Award, and Nosferatu, a libretto. He was recently nominated to be Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts and lives in Santa Rosa, California, with his family.

Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: Graywolf Press; 10 Anv edition (September 1, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1555973701
• ISBN-13: 978-1555973704
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6.1 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #687,878 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

24 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An insightful book, February 12, 2001

By 

amazonker (Minneapolis, MN) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Can Poetry Matter?: Essays on Poetry and American Culture (Paperback)

The title essay in this book is by far the most important. It's well worth at least checking this book out from a library just to read that first essay. As a poet in an MFA program, I am currently experiencing the severance from the rest of society and alienation from literary criticism that Gioia describes so well. He's right on target. I'm not sure about some of his prescriptions for moving poetry back into public interest (i.e. reading from the work of other poets at one of your own readings), but the fact that he is able to articulate poetry's problems so well should at least get writers thinking about our own solutions. Incidentally, the rest of the essays do decline in quality through the course of the book, but I nevertheless found the final essay on New Formalism worthwhile. I actually didn't know much about the movement other than some mildly disparaging remarks made by various professors during workshop, so Gioia's perspective was refreshing.

20 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars opening essays of book are essential reading for our age, October 1, 1997

By 

[e-mail] (Massachusetts) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Can Poetry Matter?: Essays on Poetry and American Culture (Paperback)

The Kirkus review of "Can Poetry Matter?" is pretty much right on target. The opening essays of the book are a necessary (and necessarily condemnatory) critique on the current state of poetry in America. The articles on Kees, Jeffers, etc., are less impressive, and the review reprints which end the book are even less so. Still, the strength of the first few essays outweighs these drawbacks.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Worth One's Time!, July 7, 2008

By 

G. Charles Steiner - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Can Poetry Matter?: Essays on Poetry and American Culture (Paperback)

The title essay wasn't the best thing about this book on matters poetical, in my view. Whether poetry does matter or whether poetry can matter are two different questions, but Dana Gioia treats these two as one and the same and, in the end, doesn't answer it, except incompletely. Yes, poetry CAN make your life happy . . . . he weakly suggests at the end of the piece.

The essay on Robert Bly (the "successful poet") was stunningly vicious and blessedly beautiful at the same time: highly insightful.

The two separate essays on Weldon Kees and Robinson Jeffers ("Strong Counsel") were perfection in analysis and appreciation of these poets' works (except for one mistake: the author is wrong in stating that Robinson Jeffers never won any award in his lifetime. Mr. Jeffers won many awards - seven that I know of. Mr. Jeffers was not partial, however, to receiving awards, and he wrote a poem about how one should avoid all publicity.).

I felt deep gratitude as well for one essay entitled "Short Views" in which the reader is teased with the pleasures to be found in the poetry of Tom Disch (now deceased as of July 4, 2008 by suicide), Radcliffe Squires, and Theodore Weiss.

The essay "Business and Poetry" never answers the question why poets do not write about business in their poems, though the author gives hints feints here and there.

Ted Kooser was pleasingly and carefully examined as a minor regional poet.

Two essays devoted to the New Formalism did not themselves contain any major ideas to blow one away with insight or appreciation particularly. They merely do the job of showing that it exists on the contemporary scene, and Dana Gioia himself is a practitioner (though he carefully omits to say).

No mention either is ever made of Stephen Dunn or James Wright in any of these essays. I can only wonder why Dana Gioia mentioned other poets less well-known than these two men. But he does not even mention Cavafy, and Dana Gioia published a poem referencing this poet's name in the title. It may be simply the author could not include these poets in these essays out of an embarrassment of riches.

These essays are seriously worth your time.