Pity the Beautiful: Poems

by Dana Gioia

Overview

The long-awaited fourth collection by one of America's foremost poets

O Lord of indirection and ellipses,

ignore our prayers. Deliver us from distraction.

Slow our heartbeat to a cricket's call.

—from "Prophecy"

Pity the Beautiful is Dana Gioia's first new poetry book in over a decade. Its emotional revelations and careful construction are hard won, inventive, and resilient. These new poems show Gioia's craftsmanship at its finest, its most mature, as they make music, crack wise, remember the dead, and in a long, central poem even tell ghost stories.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781555976132
Publisher:	Graywolf Press
Publication date:	05/08/2012
Pages:	88
Product dimensions:	5.30(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.30(d)

About the Author

Dana Gioia is the former chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, and currently serves as the Judge Widney Professor of Poetry and Public Culture at the University of Southern California. He lives in Washington, DC.

Table of Contents

I The Present 3

The Angel with the Broken Wing 4

Prophecy 6

Reunion 8

The Road 9

Shopping 10

The Lunatic, The Lover, and The Poet 13

II Prayer at Winter Solstice 17

Finding A Box Of Family Letters 18

The Freeways Considered as Earth Gods 20

Las Animas (Luzi) 22

Hunt (Luzi) 24

The Seven Deadly Sins 26

Autumn Inaugural 27

Special Treatments Ward 29

III Haunted 35

IV Words For Music

Pity The Beautiful 45

The Heart of the Matter 46

Cold San Francisco 47

Four Songs from Tont Caruso's Final Broadcast

1 Marketing Department Trio 48

2 Maria Callas's Aria 50

3 Tony's Last Aria 52

4 Final Duet 53

V The Apple Orchard 57

On The Shore (Luzi) 58

Being Happy 59

The Coat 60

The Argument 61

My Love, Don't Believe (Cattafi) 62

These Little Birds (Cattafi) 63

After A Line of Neruda 64

Who's There? 65

Starting Over 66

Majority 68

Notes on the Poems 71

Editorial Reviews

In his best poems, Gioia rises to the occasion of all great poetry: to immortalize our experience by submitting it to the test of tradition and inspiration.” —Thomas D'Evelyn, The Christian Science Monitor

“Gioia concerns himself with every aspect of his craft: its traditions, its movements toward and away from rhyme and meter, and its ancient roots in the sound of the human voice . . . Gioia is clearly a poet whose words are heard, whose positions ignite debate, whose work constantly and unflinchingly searches out new ways to counter what he calls 'our sentimental, upbeat age.'” —from the American Book Award citation for Interrogations at Noon

“Dana Gioia's poems always reveal his narrative ease and naturalness of diction; he's partly an old-fashioned storyteller and partly a metaphysical poet of reflection and devotion. From his very first book, which was published twenty-five years ago, he's always been considered one of this country's most accomplished formal masters.” —David St. John

From the Publisher