#26: DANA GIOIA- THE GREAT POETRY REVIVAL

Dana Gioia is a poet, a librettist, the Judge Widney Professor at the University of Southern California. As the Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, Dana was unanimously confirmed twice by the Senate to lead the NEA from 2003 through 2009. He has been given ten honorary degrees and won numerous awards, including the 2010 Laetare Medal from Notre Dame University. In 2015, Gioia was named the Poet Laureate of California by Gov. Jerry Brown.

This is one of those conversations deserving close attention, even if your only exposure to poetry was in high school with e.e. cummings and Alan Ginsberg. Dana is a master at communicating subtlety and mystery, and bears interesting insights galore. And check out his account of his long rambling dinner with novelist Anthony “A Clockwork Orange” Burgess!

Catholics and other Christians need to get into the game of creative writing, music, poetry, and other sources of beauty for which this sad world is…starving.

Here is a great intro to his work, 99 Poems: New and Selected .

Watch this video of Dana reciting the poem Prayer, this one is about his late infant son.

You’re welcome!

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