118 Poetry for Students
plain, its language charged with a sad music: “And
now you are nowhere. You are nothing, / Not even
ashes. How very like you, love, I To slip away so
skillfully. / You didn’t even leave behind a grave... .”
Gioia’s poems are superb in their blend of toughness
and vulnerability, their quest for solace before loss,
their measured yet memorable voice, and though
Interrogations at Noonoften speaks of death and ab-
sence, it offers the consolation of uncommon craft.
Source:Ned Balbo, Review of Interrogations at Noon, in
Antioch Review, Vol. 60, No. 1, Winter 2002, p. 167.Ray Olson
In the following review, Olson praises Gioia’s
incorporation of classical elements into Interroga-
tions at Noonand asserts that Gioia will become
“a classic poet himself.”The ancient Greeks and Romans created
European civilization, and studying their literature—
the classics—has long been considered a civilizing
activity. But the classics also teach plenty about
chaos, not least that the human heart is never sat-
isfied. Gioia and Slavitt, each of whom has trans-
lated classical literature (Slavitt prodigiously),
show that they have learned civilization in the for-
mal dexterity of their verse, that they have learned
the turbulent heart in the content of their poems.
Gioia is, at midlife, full of regrets. He writes
about the youthful intellectual sparring partner, never
seen since, who he learns has died of AIDS; about
the child who grows ever “more gorgeously like you”
but whose likeness is also “not a slip or a fumble but
a total rout”; and about “the better man I might have
been.” Most affectingly, he writes about his son who
died in childhood. “Comfort me with stones,” he
prays. “Quench my thirst with sand.” In those deso-
late lines, he echoes the Song of Songs,a masterpiece
of the third classical tongue, Hebrew, whereas in
many other poems, he draws on Greek and Roman
motifs, stories, and attitudes. He finds in the classics
and conveys to us the acceptance of mortality and
the celebration of beauty that have made the classics
perdurably relevant. And his rhymes are true, his me-
ters are correct and musical, his diction is fresh—he
is well on the way to becoming a classic poet himself.
Fifteen years Gioia’s senior, Slavitt has largely
shaken off regrets and assumed the great Jewish
obligation and passion for arguing, maybe not always
with God but always with the way things are said to
be. If “an instant’s sin endures forever,” he asks, why
not a moment of grace or of beauty? And why must
time flow in one direction only? He questions beauty
and its satisfactions, whether the beauty produced byhoned talent in “Performance: An Eclogue,” or the
beauty descried by honed perceptions in “Against
Landscape.” He speculates that Moses was barred
from the promised land because by bringing down
the Torah, he “did not / diminish heaven so much as
elevate earth.” Slavitt complements his querulous
querying with rancorous humor (see “Spite”); bitter-
sweet resignation (see the self-scouring “Culls”);
wordplay (“Cake and Milk,” for instance, consists
entirely of cliches); classical references and transla-
tions from Greek, Latin, Hebrew, French, and Ger-
man; and a grandfather’s love. He has written many
civilized books, but has he written any more broadly
and deeply civilized than this one?
Source:Ray Olson, Review of Interrogations at Noon, in
Booklist, Vol. 97, No. 14, March 15, 2001, p. 1345.Sources
Balbo, Ned, Review of Interrogations at Noon, in the Anti-
och Review, Vol. 60, No. 1, Winter 2002, p. 167.
Frost, Robert, “Design,” in The Norton Anthology of Amer-
ican Literature, Vol. D, 6th ed., edited by Nina Baym, Nor-
ton, 2003, p. 1196.
Gioia, Dana, Disappearing Ink: Poetry at the End of Print
Culture, Graywolf Press, 2004.
—, Interrogations at Noon, Graywolf Press, 2001,
pp. 10–11.
“Hip-Hop Bards,” in the Wilson Quarterly, Vol. 27, No. 4,
Autumn 2003, pp. 105–106.
Murphy, Bruce F., “Music and Lyrics,” in Poetry, Vol. 179,
No. 5, February 2002, pp. 283, 290, 291.
Olson, Ray, Review of Interrogations at Noon, in Booklist,
Vol. 97, No. 14, March 15, 2001, p. 1345.Further Reading
Bawer, Bruce, “The Poet in the Gray Flannel Suit,” in
Connoisseur, March 1989, pp. 108–112.
Bawer presents a comprehensive overview of Gioia
and his work.
Kübler-Ross, Elisabeth, On Death and Dying, Scribners, 1997.
This important study explores ways to cope with the
end of life.
McPhillips, Robert, “Reading the New Formalists,” in
Sewanee Review, Vol. 97, Winter 1989, pp. 73–96.
McPhillips examines the doctrines of the new for-
malists, including Gioia.
Turco, Lewis, “Neoformalism in Contemporary American
Poetry,” in his The Public Poet: Five Lectures on the Art
and Craft of Poetry, Ashland Poetry Press, 1991, pp. 39–56.
Lewis adds to the discussion his interpretations of
this new school of literary criticism.The Litany