There's a brief review (very mixed) by Arthur Mortensen of Gioia's
latest book at http://www.n2hos.com/acm/rev052001.html He likes the
poems better than I do, I think. Gioia is far from the best of the
writer's he's been associated with.
On Sunday, July 15, 2001, at 01:18 PM, Robin Hamilton wrote:
> It's probably unfair to base a judgement on one poem selected at
> random, but
> ... From Dana Gioia's website:
>
> (I don't think I've quoted so much as to violate copyright -- material
> quoted in the context of fair comment -- OK, moderators?)
>
> The Next Poem
>
> How much better it seems now
> than when it is finally done-
> the unforgettable first line,
> the cunning way the stanzas run.
>
> The rhymes soft-spoken and suggestive
> are barely audible at first,
> an appetite not yet acknowledged
> like the inkling of a thirst.
>
> abcb has to be a cop-out. This is much the easiest of the quatrain
> forms.
>
> And that first verse -- the last line finally reaches regular iambic
> octameter. Is this deliberate (I think there could be a case made out
> for
> this in the larger context of the poem, but ...) or is it that the
> rhythms
> of lines 1-3 [especially line 2] simply aren't in focus?
>
> And behind the whole poem, the ghost of Auden. In fact, I'm tempted to
> say
> the poem is a bad pastiche of Auden. "No jumble box of imagery"
> (Gioia) --
> "Jumbled in a common box" (Auden). If I want to read Auden, I'll read
> Auden, not Auden-and-water.
>
> The music that of common speech
> but slanted so that each detail
> sounds unexpected as a sharp
> inserted in a simple scale.
>
> That "detail" -- the only way to make rhythmic sense (and the context
> of the
> rhyme with "scale" emphasises this) is to twist the normal
> pronunciation of
> DEtail to deTAIL. This after a line mentioning the music of common
> speech
> (sic!). Or is this a complex postmodern example of irony?
>
> OK someone, convince me why I should bother to read another Gioia poem.
> Maybe this isn't typical? But ...
>
> Robin
>
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