Dana Gioia

Biography

Dana Gioia is the author of five books of poetry, including the forthcoming 99 Poems: New & Selected (Graywolf, 2016), and three books of essays. Winner of the American Book Award in poetry, he is the Judge Widney Professor of Poetry and Public Culture at the University of Southern California and is the former chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts.

http://www.danagioia.net/

See Work

POETRY / Winter 2016

Meditation on a Line From Novalis

By Dana Gioia

When his beloved Sophie died, Novalis 
Lay by her grave and wept himself to sleep.
On the third night she met him in a dream.
He woke transformed, longing for the last trance,
“When sleep shall be without waking.” 

POETRY / Summer 2015

Meet Me at the Lighthouse

By Dana Gioia

Meet me at the Lighthouse in Hermosa Beach,
That shabby, squat nightclub on its foggy pier.
Let’s aim for the summer of ’71,
When all of our friends were young and immortal.

POETRY / Summer 2015

Hot Summer Night (Jazz Songs for Helen Sung)

By Dana Gioia

Let’s go downtown. It’s a hot summer night.
Lovers are sitting in sidewalk cafés—
Breaking up, making up, hooking up, cooking up
Plans for tonight that leave them amazed.

ESSAYS / Spring 2013

Robert Frost and the Modern Narrative

By Dana Gioia

A nagging question in Frost criticism in the half-century since the author’s death has been where to place him in the larger narrative of American poetry.
POETRY / Winter 2013

Film Noir

By Dana Gioia

It’s a farm town in the August heat
With a couple of bars along Main Street.
A jukebox moans from an open door

POETRY / Spring 2012

After a Line of Neruda

By Dana Gioia

Naked, only naked did I know you.
I, who had clothed you in my longing, now
Was undeceived. Naked in the darkness,
No longer blind.