Even if great poetry continues to be written, it has retreated from the center of literary life. Though supported by a loyal coterie, poetry has lost the confidence that it speaks to and for the general culture.
Dana GioiaEveryone enjoys stories of double lives and secret identities. Children have Superman; intellectuals have Wallace Stevens.
Dana GioiaPoetry offers a way of understanding and expressing existence that is fundamentally different from conceptual thought.
Dana GioiaIt seems to me that awakening to the full potential of what your life might be - beyond the possibilities of your own family, your own class, your own race, your own neighborhood - that is one of the great gifts that art affords.
Dana Gioia