List Price: $16.00
Save: $1.54 (10%)

FREE Shipping on orders with at least $25 of books.

Only 7 left in stock (more on the way).

Ships from and sold by Amazon.com. Gift-wrap available.

Turn on 1-Click ordering for this browser

Want it Thursday, Aug. 11? Order within and choose this date at checkout.

Ship to:

Select a shipping address:

Buy Used

$8.73

FREE Shipping on orders over $25.

Used: Good | Details

Sold by Hearst Brook

Fulfilled by Amazon

Turn on 1-Click ordering for this browser

Have one to sell? Sell on Amazon

Flip to back Flip to front

Listen Playing... Paused You're listening to a sample of the Audible audio edition.
Learn more

See all 2 images

Can Poetry Matter?: Essays on Poetry and American Culture Paperback – September 1, 2002

by Dana Gioia (Author, Introduction)

5 customer reviews

See all 4 formats and editions Hide other formats and editions

Price

New from

Used from

Hardcover

"Please retry"

—

$102.31

$28.30

Paperback

"Please retry"

$14.46

$7.28

$3.45

Unknown Binding

"Please retry"

—

$3.31

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.

Can Poetry Matter?: Essays on Poetry and American Culture

$14.46 FREE Shipping on orders with at least $25 of books. Only 7 left in stock (more on the way). Ships from and sold by Amazon.com. Gift-wrap available.

Frequently Bought Together

Total price: $46.52

Buy the selected items together

This item:Can Poetry Matter?: Essays on Poetry and American Culture by Dana Gioia Paperback $14.46
In Stock.
Ships from and sold by Amazon.com.
FREE Shipping on orders over $25. Details
99 Poems: New & Selected by Dana Gioia Hardcover $17.92
In Stock.
Ships from and sold by Amazon.com.
FREE Shipping on orders over $25. Details
Pity the Beautiful: Poems by Dana Gioia Paperback $14.14
In Stock.
Ships from and sold by Amazon.com.
FREE Shipping on orders over $25. Details

Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought

Page 1 of 1 Start overPage 1 of 1

This shopping feature will continue to load items. In order to navigate out of this carousel please use your heading shortcut key to navigate to the next or previous heading.

Dana Gioia

10

Hardcover
$17.92
Dana Gioia

4

Paperback
$16.00
Dana Gioia

19

Paperback
$14.14
Dana Gioia

11

Paperback
$15.77
Dana Gioia

4

Paperback
$12.00
Jay Parini

7

Paperback
$13.04

NO_CONTENT_IN_FEATURE

Product Details

Paperback: 256 pages
Publisher: Graywolf Press; 10th Anniversary ed. edition (September 1, 2002)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1555973701
ISBN-13: 978-1555973704
Product Dimensions: 6 x 0.8 x 9 inches
Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #73,384 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #46 in Books > Literature & Fiction > History & Criticism > Genres & Styles > Poetry
- #153 in Books > Literature & Fiction > History & Criticism > Regional & Cultural > United States
- #482 in Books > Literature & Fiction > History & Criticism > Criticism & Theory

Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?

Customer Reviews

4.4 out of 5 stars

5 star		40%
4 star		60%
3 star		0%
2 star		0%
1 star		0%

See all 5 customer reviews

Share your thoughts with other customers

Write a customer review

Top Customer Reviews

An insightful book

By amazonker on February 12, 2001

Format: 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.

Comment 30 people found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No Sending feedback...

Thank you for your feedback.

Sorry, we failed to record your vote. Please try again

Report abuse

opening essays of book are essential reading for our age

By wjg@brooktrout.com on October 1, 1997

Format: 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.

Comment 24 people found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No Sending feedback...

Thank you for your feedback.

Sorry, we failed to record your vote. Please try again

Report abuse

Powerful insightful wise essays on poets and poetry in our current era

By Beverley R. Enright on January 29, 2014

Format: Hardcover Verified Purchase

This is a very engrossing, engaging, and insightful discussion of the place of poetry in our culture and of the most important poets writing it. He discusses the effects of the current fast pace of our lives and how that has encouraged the writing of shorter poems with the loss of the enrichment and power of the longer narrative poem. His essay on Ted Kooser, one of my very favorite poets is superb. This is a must read.

Comment 2 people found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No Sending feedback...

Thank you for your feedback.

Sorry, we failed to record your vote. Please try again

Report abuse

A very accessible discussion of modern poetry

By James Owen on September 18, 2012

Format: Paperback Verified Purchase

This book is quite accessible and encourages even casual readers of poetry to read modern poetry. With the poetry from this author and from the many more like him who are reviewed in the book, while I have no hope that the boy that driveth the plow might begin to read poetry, I can dream of a day when even hardened sea captains might again name their ships after characters and ideas they gain from poetry.
I was most encouraged.

Comment Was this review helpful to you? Yes No Sending feedback...

Thank you for your feedback.

Sorry, we failed to record your vote. Please try again

Report abuse

Poetry Saved My Life!

By My Inner Chick on October 5, 2006

Format: Paperback

DOES POETRY MATTER? YES! Yes! Yes! Without poetry, I may have ended up like Plath, Sexton, Woolf, or who the hell knows! Poetry nutured me, comforted me, fed me, loved me......the flowing words of Oliver, Gluck, Lee, Keats, and yes, Sylvia Plath's gorgeous confessional poetry-- entered my mind and body like a medicine of vowels, syllables, metaphor, and music.

Dana Gioia's book "Does Poetry Matter," was an eye opener.

"People who support the arts, who attend foreign films and serious

theater, opera, symphony, and dance; who read quality fiction

and biographies,; who listen to public radio and subscibe to the

best jounals. (They are the parents who read poetry to their

children and remember, once upon a time in college or high

school or kindergarten, liking it themselves.) No one knows

the size of this community, but even if on acceps the con-

servative estimate that it accounts for only TWO PERCENT of the

United States."---CAN POETRY MATTER?

This blew my socks off! I realized I was in the minority, but this is completely unbelievable. Is poetry really dead? If so, I am mourning her exisistence. "In a better world, poetry would need no justification beyond the sheer splendor of its own existence."

Does Poetry Matter? Yes! But we need to make poetry available to everybody, not only the intellectual, rich, and culturally fortunate---We need to make the words mean something for everybody, everywhere. Dana Gioia continues speaking of the intellectual community as though they are the the chosen few; the saviors of lost verse; the people who can resurrect the promised land...Read more ›

Comment 7 people found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No Sending feedback...

Thank you for your feedback.

Sorry, we failed to record your vote. Please try again

Report abuse

See all 5 customer reviews (newest first)

Write a customer review

Set up an Amazon Giveaway

Amazon Giveaway allows you to run promotional giveaways in order to create buzz, reward your audience, and attract new followers and customers. Learn more about Amazon Giveaway

This item: Can Poetry Matter?: Essays on Poetry and American Culture

Set up a giveaway