Poetry as Enchantment - by Dana Gioia (Paperback)

About the Book

"Dana Gioia, one of America's leading poet-critics, explains why poetry exists and why we need it in this sparkling collection of essays. More personal than any of Gioia's earlier works, Poetry as Enchantment reflects a lifetime of thought and experience. Gioia, the author of Can Poetry Matter?, talks about poetry in a radically different way than it is currently being taught or discussed. In the title essay, he explains that poetry is speech raised to the level of song, and though poetry may often be misunderstood as intellectual, it moves us the way music does. Poetry charms its readers, creating a heightened experience of attention. It addresses readers in the fullness of their humanity, simultaneously speaking to the mind, emotions, imagination, memory, and physical senses. Without academic jargon, Poetry as Enchantment relates literature to the questions of life"--

Book Synopsis

"Gioia joins W. H. Auden, Randall Jarrell, and D. H. Lawrence in embracing criticism that is insightfully intellectual and surprisingly personal . . . Always a canny discussant of contemporary poetics, Gioia again provides vital guidance for evaluating poetry that will appeal to tenured professors and armchair aficionados alike."
―Booklist

"Few critics write more engagingly and perceptively about poetry than Dana Gioia . . ."
―Michael Dirda, Washington Post

Dana Gioia, one of America's leading poet-critics, explains why poetry exists and why we need it in this sparkling collection of essays.

More personal than any of Gioia's earlier works, Poetry as Enchantment reflects a lifetime of thought and experience. Gioia, the author of Can Poetry Matter?, talks about poetry in a radically different way than it is currently being taught or discussed. In the title essay, he explains that poetry is speech raised to the level of song, and though poetry may often be misunderstood as intellectual, it moves us the way music does. Poetry charms its readers, creating a heightened experience of attention. It addresses readers in the fullness of their humanity, simultaneously speaking to the mind, emotions, imagination, memory, and physical senses. Without academic jargon, Poetry as Enchantment relates literature to the questions of life.

Review Quotes

"Gioia joins W. H. Auden, Randall Jarrell, and D. H. Lawrence in embracing criticism that is insightfully intellectual and surprisingly personal . . . Always a canny discussant of contemporary poetics, Gioia again provides vital guidance for evaluating poetry that will appeal to tenured professors and armchair aficionados alike."
―Booklist

"Readers who may doubt that poetry is for them will find in Gioia a discerning guide to its power and pleasures."
―National Review

"Few critics write more engagingly and perceptively about poetry than Dana Gioia . . ."
―Michael Dirda, Washington Post

"Dana Gioia, one of America's best living poets, also a critic and former chairman of the NEA, has gathered seventeen essays into his new book, Poetry as Enchantment. Like T. S. Eliot and Wallace Stevens, poets who also wrote essays about poetry, Gioia has the authority and clarity of someone proven successful in the art about which he is writing. His style, though erudite, is clear and without pretense, refreshingly free of theoretical and abstruse language and a great pleasure to read."
―World Literature Today

PRAISE FOR DANA GIOIA'S OTHER BOOKS:

"Highly enjoyable . . . Studying with Miss Bishop offers the opportunity to encounter writing as an act of civility."

―Wall Street Journal

"[A] fantastically charming collection."
―Los Angeles Review of Books on Studying with Miss Bishop

"Fascinating snapshots of remarkable encounters which, when brought together, chart a delightfully unusual path to literary success."
―Booklist on Studying with Miss Bishop

"With perfect tonal and formal control, the poet's voice seems to emanate from somewhere between author and reader, between dream and memory."
―The New Criterion on Meet Me at the Lighthouse

"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 on Can Poetry Matter?

"Vibrant and inviting."
―The Washington Post on 99 Poems: New & Selected

"Great riches in remarkably few pages."
―Booklist, Starred Review on Pity the Beautiful: Poems

About the Author

Dana Gioia is a poet and critic. He has published six full-length collections of verse―99 Poems: New & Selected won the Poets' Prize as the best new book of the year, and Interrogations at Noon won the American Book Award―and a memoir, Studying with Miss Bishop (Paul Dry Books, 2021). His controversial volume Can Poetry Matter? was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, and is credited with helping revive the role of poetry in American public culture. Gioia has served as the Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts and as California State Poet Laureate. He divides his time between Los Angeles and Sonoma County, California.