Twisting through the thorn-thick underbrush, scratched and exhausted, one turns suddenly to find an unexpected waterfall, not half a mile from the… — Dana Gioia Dragonflies Copy Share Image
“Bells and incense!” scoffs the Puritan, but God gave people ears and noses. Are those organs of perception too humble to bring… — Dana Gioia Catholic Copy Share Image
“I attended Catholic schools at a time when Latin was still a living ritual language.” — Dana Gioia Education Copy Share Image
Paradoxically, the simpler poetry is, the more difficult it becomes for a critic to discuss intelligently. Trained to explicate, the critic often… — Dana Gioia Ability Copy Share Image
In America, the term younger poet is applied with chivalric liberality. It can be used to describe anyone not yet collecting a… — Dana Gioia America Copy Share Image
“The slow maturation of genuine creativity looks like laziness to a committee. Wallace Stevens was forty-three when his first book appeared. Robert… — Dana Gioia Academia Copy Share Image
We offer you the landscape of your birth -- Exquisite and despoiled. We all share blame. We cannot ask forgiveness of the… — Dana Gioia Asking for forgiveness Copy Share Image
Money. You don't know where it's been, but you put it where your mouth is. And it talks! — Dana Gioia Funny Copy Share Image
“This is the feast of our mortality, the most mundane and human holiday.” — Dana Gioia Death Copy Share Image
To speak from a particular place and time is not provincialism but part of a writer's identity. — Dana Gioia Identity Copy Share Image
What we conceal Is always more than what we dare confide. Think of the letters that we write our dead. — Dana Gioia Dare Copy Share Image
Poetry is not a creed or dogma. It is a special way of speaking and listening. — Dana Gioia Communication Copy Share Image
“Dali dreamed of Hitler as a white-skinned girl- impossibly pale, luminous and lifeless as the moon.” — Dana Gioia Copy Share Image
We lived in places that we never knew. We could not name the birds perched on our sill, Or see the trees… — Dana Gioia Bird Copy Share Image
“O Suburbs of Despair where nothing but the weather ever changes!” — Dana Gioia Suburbia Copy Share Image
There are some truths about life that can be expressed only as stories, or songs, or images. Art delights, instructs, consoles. It… — Dana Gioia Art Copy Share Image
Once an author finishes a poem, he becomes merely another reader. I may remember what I intended to put into a text,… — Dana Gioia Books Copy Share Image
And hate the bright stillness of the noon without wind, without motion. the only other living thing a hawk, hungry for prey,… — Dana Gioia Blue Copy Share Image
“In the evening when the light is dim, I hide in bed and collect the silhouettes of reasoning which silently run across… — Dana Gioia Light Copy Share Image
