Book News: First collection of interviews with poet Dana Gioia

Conversations with Dana Gioia

EDITED BY JOHN ZHENG

UP of Mississippi, 2021

ISBN: 978-1-4968-3204-7 Paper

https://www.upress.state.ms.us/Books/C/Conversations-with-Dana-Gioia

“Like all art, poetry makes us more alert and attentive to the mystery of our own lives.”  --Dana Gioia

Conversations with Dana Gioia is the first collection of interviews with the internationally known poet and public intellectual, covering every stage of his busy, polymathic career. Dana Gioia (b. 1950) has made many contributions to contemporary American literature and culture, including but not limited to crafting a personal poetic style suited to the age; leading the revival of rhyme, meter, and narrative through New Formalism; walloping the “intellectual ghetto” of American poetry through his epochal article “Can Poetry Matter?”; helping American poetry move forward by organizing influential conferences; providing public service and initiating nationwide arts projects such as Poetry Out Loud through his leadership of the National Endowment for the Arts; and editing twenty best-selling literary anthologies widely used in American classrooms.

BOOK NEWS is an online-only feature announcing new publications in modernist and contemporary literary studies. These announcements do NOT constitute an endorsement by the Journal of Modern Literature.

Taken together, the twenty-two collected interviews increase our understanding of Gioia’s poetry and poetics, offer aesthetic pleasure in themselves, and provide a personal encounter with a writer who has made poetry matter. The book presents the actual voice of Dana Gioia, who speaks of his personal and creative life and articulates his unique vision of American culture and poetry.

"Conversations with Dana Gioia is an extraordinary book, one that serves as a sort of instant autobiography of Gioia. It is as evocative and fascinating as the only comparable book by and about a poet of which I am aware: Stepping Stones: Interviews with Seamus Heaney, by Dennis O’Driscoll (2008).... In addition to the twenty-two interviews reprinted in the book, Conversations with Dana Gioia contains three valuable research tools: the most elaborate list of works by Gioia that I have seen anywhere, a major bibliography of works about Gioia, and a chronology of his life to date. The result is an extraordinary book full of human interest and historic value." -- Carl Jenks, Poetry Corner

JOHN ZHENG is professor of English at Mississippi Valley State University and editor of Conversations with Sterling Plumpp; The Other World of Richard Wright: Perspectives on His Haiku; and African American Haiku: Cultural Visions; as well as coeditor (with Biling Chen) of Conversations with Gish Jen, all published by University Press of Mississippi. His work has also been published in such journals as African American Review, East-West Connections, Journal of Ethnic American Literature, Paideuma, and Southern Quarterly.