Dana Gioia

It certainly isn't over til it's over. Dana Gioia's 99 Poems, New & Selected has been the sort of revelation I had all but given up on, having retreated to a position where I thought I must have found anything there was worth having in poetry and music by now, and not qua John Peel that the things I didn't know about were more interesting than those I did.

I've been well aware of him for maybe 30 years but one needs good reason to pursue such things further and he never quite triggered that move and I had him down as one of the good guys without going far enough to find him propelled just about onto the very short list of 'favourite living poets' alongside O'Brien and Kleinzahler.

99 Poems is an absolute joy, organized into themes rather than chronologically which is fine if a poet's first published work hits the ground running and matters of development are of lesser import. You couldn't do that with Thom Gunn or David Bowie. The 'formalism' is very important but maybe not to the extent it was with Timothy Steele, the metronomic stylist of the New Formalists. 

And so neither is it over til it's over with essays. With several more books on order it's hard to say what more remains to be found to be said but I've got a certain amount already. I can hardly put it here in what might turn out to be a half-baked version but, as is necessary and one hopes might continue to happen, one looks out on what appears to be a barren landscape in which nothing offers itself as a subject to write about but then the world proves to be richer than one thought - as it surely must be- and one is provided with reason to believe.