Sometimes it is necessary to have another income source when one is first thinking about becoming a poet. Such was life for American poet and essayist Dana Gioia, who spent the first fifteen years of his writing career penning feverishly at night whilst working full time at General Food Corporation during the day. When he had his 1991 essay Does Poetry Matter? published in Atlantic magazine, Gioia garnered enough international attention that he was able to give up his day job, and become a writer full time. His main contention in this essay was that poetry was largely marginalized, and that the general public indifference to poetry has had a trickle-down (or trickle-up) effect on college professors, who tend not to teach it very much either.
Gioia took the marginalization of poetry very personally primarily because he had built up quite a name for himself as a poet at least ten years before the publication of his essay. He wrote frequently for The Hudson Review and The New Yorker. He became one of the leading lights of the New Formalist movement, poets emphasizing the importance of poetic devices such as form, meter and rhyme.
Interrogations at Noon is Gioia's third volume of poetry, and was the recipient of the American Book Award in 2002. The collection includes contemplative poetry and also poems translated from the original. The poems in the collection pay homage to writers and artists past and the entire collection seems to have a sort of wistful, melancholic "what if?" mood to it. Another two collections of poetry followed; in 2005 Gioia was presented with the John Ciardi Award for Lifetime Achievement in Poetry, and in 2015 he was named Poet Laureate of California. One of his main goals is to connect students of all ages with poetry.
