Review
"If you're an educated general reader, and you read only one book about contemporary poetry, this should be that book." -- Booklist
"No one, I think, has written with greater clarity or greater poignancy -- or with a greater sense of urgency . . ." -- Hilton Kramer, The New Criterion --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.
Book Description
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 addresses 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 reissue this highly acclaimed collection in a handsome new edition. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.
From the Inside Flap
"Gioia wants poetry to reclaim the educated popular audience it once had. To that end, he pretty much flouts the contemporary American poetry establishment that's defensively, hermetically holed up in university creative writing programs.... Gioia is an engaged, thoroughgoing, enthusiastic reader, one who infuses us with his passion for poetry. If you're an educated general reader, and you read only one book about contemporary poetry, this should be that book." —Ray Olson, Booklist
"This book, destined to be a classic, doubtless will be rejected by many university-based poets....His criticism of postmodern and contemporary poets is fair, objective and equally insightful...I read his text during a three-hour flight to Phoenix and glanced at the snow-capped Rockies for only a few seconds. It was the first time I had seen the Rockies too." —Michael J. Bugeja, Columbus Dispatch
"[Dana Gioia is] an excellent poet and also, perhaps, the most acute practical critic in America." —Jonathan Holden
"Can Poetry Matter? is an important book, and anyone who professes to care about the state of American poetry will have to take it into account." —World Literature Today
"Dana Gioia—poet, essayist, and critic—wants to blow poetry right out of the halls of university writing departments and into popular culture. He wants to restore the ‘vulgar vitality’ that made poetry so important in the 19th century.…He wants to ‘reconnect the P word with pleasure.’" —Mary Ann Grossman, Saint Paul Pioneer Press --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.
