Customer Reviews

The Gods of Winter

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Dana Gioia has made a name for himself as both a poet and a critic. And I've heard both sides of the argument, but if you have read _The Gods of Winter_ than you cannot deny his excellence as a poet (and if you haven't read this collection, then you definitely should go and buy it now). The book is divided into five sections. Section I contains seven of his better poems. "All Souls'", "The Gods of Winter", and "Planting a Sequoia" are here. The poems in this first section are about loss, even "Planting a Sequoia" which is also about life. Section II contains the longer poem "Counting the Children." The poems in Section III are poems more about place rather than the loss of sections I & II. Section IV is the long narrative, "The Homecoming." It's a dark poem, Frost-like in its nature, about a troubled boy and what happens when he goes home to his family. The final poems, in Section V, while still dark, leave us with a bit more hope than found in any of the other sections.

Gioia's use of language and choice of words is exceptionally beautiful in this collection. And the heartbreak of losing a child if felt throughout. This collection leaves the reader a little sad, but with much to think about.

Although there are a couple of poems I did not enjoy much, the majority were so touching. You can feel the pain of the loss of Gioia's small son. Planting a Sequoia is my favorite. His writing is simple to understand and straight forward. I am in college to be an English teacher and I plan to use some of Gioa's poetry because there are connections that I feel high school students can understand. I love the book.

For those misguided reviewers who expect all poetry to be Summer and Spring, or Autumn leaves in wonderful color, God has given the planet one other crucial season, Winter, of which the poet Dana Gioia so eloquently speaks. Having experienced personal tragedy, he tries to portray his attempts at making sense of the dark seasons of life that God allows to be sent our way. While not perhaps quite at the level of prowess or majesty as Hardy, Yeats, Housman, de la Mare, Frost, Robinson, Masefield, Auden, Wilbur or Santayana, nonetheless Gioia remains one of the world's finest poets. The fact that he has the courage to face unpleasant subjects head on as he does shows his boldness as a poet. Veterans Cemetary is a classic treatment of passing on. If you enjoy rhyming poetry that makes sense with a mostly plain, conversational style not too erudite or sophisticated, you've come to the right place. I look forward to his next collection to be released April 2001. A must-have addition to the home library.

The previous "reader" from New York does make valid points regarding Mr. Gioia's work, but he or she fails to realize the entire impetus for Gioia's work. The book is SUPPOSED to be dark. After having corresponded with Mr. Gioia himself about the book, I ascertained that it is some of his best work. Because he lost his first son, Michael Jasper, of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, his poetry is justifiable dark and probes the abyss of the psyche and of despair. Imprecise language and confusing syntax? Not on your life! While a few of his poems, such as the title poem, do get verbose, their diction is nonetheless vivid: "The world is annihilated/ and remade with only us as witnesses" ("The Gods of Winter"). One of his long poems, "The Homecoming," is especially provocative. After all, isn't that what good poetry should be? His is powerful and meditative verse, his skill at meter adept. Though his style of rhyme and metrics goes against the grain, I admire him for that. He is one of a few beacons shining in the light of contemporary poetry's relative obscurity from the general public, the very people poetry wishes to impact.

this book is a sensitive, strong slice of the poet's life. As a critic, Daniel Gioia shines, and to read his poetry is indeed a priviledge!

Dana Gioia's theme in "The Gods of Winter" is death, without the hope of afterlife, where death is sometimes regarded after the fact, as in "All Souls," Veterans' Cemetery," and "Planting a Sequoia," and sometimes anticipated, as in "On Approaching Forty," "The Gods of Winter," and "Guide to the Other Gallery."

In all, this book of sixty-two pages contains twenty-five poems, two of which are long narrative poems, and the rest comprise one or two pages each. Almost all the poems deal with death; a few are about writing poems.

Unfortunately, Mr. Gioia's use of language is disappointing - overly wordy, diffuse, and imprecise; only occasionally does a beautiful line surface from the murky sea of words. Consider the title poem. Narrator and spouse observe from indoors a heavy March snowstorm, and the narrator meditates on the impermanence of the snow, and of their lives. The poem ends in 3 1/2 lovely lines, "... one still winter must /arrive without us, then our eternity /is only this white storm, the whisper /of your breath, the deities of this quiet night." This passage justifies the title, and is a nice accomplishment. But to reach it the reader must wade through 20 lines of "Storm ... flurrying in moonlight" (say what?), "The world is annihilated (sic)," "storybook view of paradise," and more equally trite or dissonant phrases.

"Planting a Sequoia" is similarly seriously flawed, and that is especially disappointing because the matter of the poem deserves skillful expression. Mr. Gioia tells us of the Sicilian custom to honor a first son's birth by planting an olive or fig tree as "a sign that the earth has one more life to bear." Now this is a fine sentiment, and a nice line, but the chord contains wrong notes. Presumably daughters and subsequent sons also add one more life each to the earth. The custom honors, rather, the beginning of a new generation. It's a shame for this poem not to ring true, but it does not. In this case, the narrator's son was stillborn, and a Sequoia is planted instead. The narrator and his brothers "..have worked in the orchard, /Digging this hole, laying you (the Sequoia) into it, carefully packing the soil." From the text we are asked to believe that at least three men work "All afternoon" to plant what is later described as "A slender shoot." Hard to believe, as much as I would like to. If the work required considerable clearing, it should be mentioned, given the level of detail already presented. I fear that in his well-known devotion to form, Mr. Gioia is cavalier with content.

Mr. Gioia has argued against the tendency of modern poetry to be incomprehensible, accessible only to academics, lacking in the traditional values and purposes of poetry, and for these arguments he is to be commended. His own poetry is plain spoken. Unfortunately, it is too often painful to the ear, and to the intellect.