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5.0 out of 5 stars
Poetry Makes Nothing Happen, May 19 2003
The title essay repeats arguments made by Joseph Epstein, John Aldridge, and many others over the years that literary culture has retreated to the university and lost its public appeal. Poetry has degenerated into a subculture and, at its worst, a counterculture. Gioia (Joy-a) closes his arguments with six sober proposals for revitalizing poetry, all of which merit consideration.Given that Gioia was vice president of General Mills for fifteen years, it is unsurprising that he would be drawn to poets who, like himself, and unlike the bulk of poets today, made their own way in the world. By earning a living in the commercial world rather than through subsidized poetry programs or the kindness of strangers, he has much in common with William Carlos Williams (pediatrician), T. S. Eliot (banker), Wallace Stevens (corporate lawyer), and Ted Kooser (insurance). "Business and Poetry" is the most interesting essay here, except that it contains one of Gioia's few false notes. In describing suicide and alcoholism as fairly typical to American poets, he implies that poetry itself leads to self-destruction, which is not so much analysis as it is melodrama. Yet the subject is fascinating, and I have often wondered how Eliot and Stevens balanced the aggression of the business world with an art that by definition makes nothing happen. Gioia shores up appreciation for other poets who for various reasons have been out of fashion: the forgotten Robinson Jeffers, the neglected Weldon Kees, sci-fi novelist Tom Disch, and the unknown Hoosier poet Jared Carter. In the quest to revitalize poetry, Gioia is sympathetic to the New Formalist school, whose methods have included a return to high critical standards and the intellectual rigors of rhyme, meter, and narrative. This comes after decades of dominance by free verse, much of which has been undisciplined and sentimental. The worst of Robert Bly, for example, Gioia takes to task for asking the reader "to experience more emotion than the poet generates." This leads to my last point that Gioia's criticism, aside from being charitable and measured, teaches something about criticism and about how to read and judge poetry. It does so, moreover, in a plain, accessible style that fulfills one of his goals for poetry: that it reach a broader audience and win back the intelligent, reading public.
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