Interrogations at Noon: Poems [Paperback]

Dana Gioia (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 1, 2001

Winner of the American Book Award

Dana Gioia, an internationally known poet and critic, is notably prolific with his essays, reviews, translations, and anthologies. But like his celebrated teacher, Elizabeth Bishop, Gioia is meticulously painstaking and self-critical about his own poems. In an active 25-year career he has published only two previous volumes of poetry. Although Gioia is often recognized as a leading force in the recent revival of rhyme and meter in American poetry, his own work does not fit neatly into any one style.

Interrogations at Noon displays an extraordinary range of style and sensibility—from rhymed couplets to free verse, from surrealist elegy to satirical ballad. What unites the poems is not a single approach but their resonant musicality and powerful but understated emotion. This new collection explores the uninvited epiphanies of love and marriage, probing the quiet mysteries of a seemingly settled domestic life. Meditating on the inescapable themes of lyric poetry—time, mortality, nature, and the contradictions of the human heart—Gioia turns them to provocative and unexpected ends.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Gioia gained prominence during the 1980s as a crusader on behalf of the New Formalists--poets who wrote about everyday lives and losses in determinedly accessible, traditional modes and metres. Though his own poetry has received respectful notices, he has gained wider acclaim as a critic and editor, especially for the polemical volume Can Poetry Matter? This third book of poems (his first since 1991) will disappoint some readers, please others and surprise very few. Much of the work here expresses predictable sentiments in predictably straightforward lines--"The daylight needs no praise and so we praise it always," notes the speaker of "Words"; a husband, imagining himself as "The Voyeur," "looks and aches not only for her touch/ but for the secret that her presence brings"; a poem called "My Dead Lover" tells him or her, "Your body was the first I ever knew/ Better than my own." Domestic happiness and everyday epiphanies have produced many good poems, in and out of traditional metres, but Gioia fails to make them linguistically or emotionally compelling in any way. His real gift is for light verse; "Elegy with Surrealist Proverbs as Refrain" has a seriocomic interest beyond its absurdly reduced subjects (Andre Breton, Apollinaire and others), and the songs from Gioia's libretto Nosferatu stand out for their verve. Translations from Seneca's tragedy Hercules Furens and from the Italian poet Valerio Magrelli flesh out what would otherwise be an extremely thin volume. (Apr.) Forecast: Gioia's prolific critical activity in myriad venues has kept his brand ID solid, even after the collapse of the New Formalism. Followers of little and larger poetry magazines will buy this book just to see what Gioia's up to; libraries and others will similarly get it for the name recognition.

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From Booklist

The ancient Greeks and Romans created European civilization, and studying their literature--the classics--has long been considered a civilizing activity. But the classics also teach plenty about chaos, not least that the human heart is never satisfied. Gioia, who has translated classical literature, shows that he has learned civilization in the formal dexterity of his verse, that he has learned the turbulent heart in the content of his poems.Gioia is, at midlife, full of regrets. He writes about the youthful intellectual sparring partner, never seen since, who he learns has died of AIDS; about the child who grows ever "more gorgeously like you" but whose likeness is also "not a slip or a fumble but a total rout"; and about "the better man I might have been." Most affectingly, he writes about his son who died in childhood. "Comfort me with stones," he prays. "Quench my thirst with sand." In those desolate lines, he echoes the Song of Songs, a masterpiece of the third classical tongue, Hebrew, whereas in many other poems, he draws on Greek and Roman motifs, stories, and attitudes. He finds in the classics and conveys to us the acceptance of mortality and the celebration of beauty that have made the classics perdurably relevant. And his rhymes are true, his meters are correct and musical, his diction is fresh--he is well on the way to becoming a classic poet himself. Ray Olson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Paperback: 64 pages
• Publisher: Graywolf Press; First Edition edition (March 1, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1555973183
• ISBN-13: 978-1555973186
• Product Dimensions: 6 x 0.3 x 9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #719,640 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

30 of 30 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars DANA GIOIA'S "INTERROGATIONS AT NOON" May 17, 2001

By Jack. Foley

Format:Paperback

New Formalist poet/critic Dana Gioia is known for his ground-breaking essay, "Can Poetry Matter?" This is his third book of poetry, and it is unlike anything produced by anyone else in America. Sicilian, Mexican and Native American in his ancestry, Gioia writes out of a "dark" Catholic sensibility--a sensibility which sees "the end of the world" in every sensuous detail around him. One of the advantages of Gioia's "formalism" is that it allows him to place deep personal experience within a form which, while deeply moving, simultaneously allows the reader to maintain a sense of esthetic distance. This tension between technical virtuosity and dark subject matter is reminiscent of the great nineteenth-century French poet, Charles Baudelaire--a Bohemian type who in other ways might be seen as Gioia's opposite. Full of strong poems by this native California--the strongest is probably "A California Requiem"--"Interrogations at Noon" is a fine introduction to one of the most thoughtful and original of American writers. Full of exquisite, mournful lines: "Think of the letters that we write our dead"; "We are like shadows the bright noon erases."

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars A Craftsman September 7, 2005

By Timothy Haugh TOP 1000 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

In my continuing (impossible) search for a poet whose every poem moves me, I read this collection by Dana Gioia. Gioia is known as a craftsman who publishes little because of his struggle bring every poem to the highest state of perfection. In fact, as one reads these poems, it is almost possible to sense how carefully every word has been chosen. In some cases, this almost becomes distracting, to the detriment of the poetry.

On the other hand, through his struggle Gioia is able to create some brilliant lines within poems whose overall effect is something less: "With eyes that have forgotten how to see/From viewing things already too well-known" from "Entrance." Or "The future shrinks/Whether the past/Is well or badly spent" from "Curriculum Vitae." Within poems like "Pentecost" and "Three Songs for Nosferatu" it is possible to find some wonderful work as well.

In this collection, however, there are two poems that I think are wonderful through and through. In "Juno Plots Her Revenge" Gioia takes us on a long rant as Juno lists her complaints against Jupiter's unfaithfulness and plans her final revenge against Hercules, one of Jupiter's bastards. Poems with classical references are often fun because the poet is able to let his hair down and be bold using a mythological goddess as a mouthpiece. There is more energy and engaging language in this longer poem than in almost all of Gioia's other poems put together. Wonderful!

But my favorite poem in this collection may be "My Dead Lover." In it, Gioia writes of a person mourning a great love ("Your body was the first I ever knew/Better than my own.") with whom he really didn't get along ("How miserable we were together, dear"). And yet he mourns anyway despite the fact that he was abandoned in this final way, without being allowed a chance to regret. Finally, he realizes "Our rituals are never for the dead." The dead are beyond caring but he must still make his peace with it. It is a very well done poem to which most of us can relate.

All in all, this is a collection well worth reading. There is no denying that Gioia is a real craftsman, no matter how one may ultimately feel about some of the poems. And there are some gems here that a poetry connoisseur should be loathe to miss.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Poetry August 2, 2008

By Dr. John Laughlin VINE™ VOICE

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

My bias is toward poets who are more direct in what they are saying. This work I found a mix of stunning and hard to grasp poems. Still, the poems that reached me were enough to make me want to read more of this talented poet.