What we conceal Is always more than what we dare confide. Think of the letters that we write our dead. Dana Gioia More Quotes by Dana Gioia More Quotes From Dana Gioia Even if great poetry continues to be written, it has retreated from the center of literary life. Though supported by a loyal coterie, poetry has lost the confidence that it speaks to and for the general culture. Dana Gioia loyalspeakculture We offer you the landscape of your birth -- Dana Gioia landscapeearthnames Poetry speaks most effectively and inclusively (whether in free or formal verse) when it recognizes its connection - without apology - to its musical and ritualistic origins. Dana Gioia apologypoetryart We are not as we were. Death has been our pentecost. Dana Gioia pentecosthas-beens Old empires always appeal to modern poets more than new ones. Dana Gioia empiresmodernpoet To speak from a particular place and time is not provincialism but part of a writer's identity. Dana Gioia particularspeakidentity In an age of global standardization, regional voices also remind both writer and reader that no life is lived generically. If the purpose of literature is truly, as the ancients insisted, to instruct and delight, then what better to understand and enjoy than the here and the now? Dana Gioia voicepurposeage In America, the term younger poet is applied with chivalric liberality. It can be used to describe anyone not yet collecting a Social Security pension. Dana Gioia poetsocialamerica The music that of common speech but slanted so that each detail sounds unexpected as a sharp inserted in a simple scale. Dana Gioia detailssimplesound How many voices have escaped you until now, the venting furnace, the floorboards underfoot, the steady accusations of the clock numbering the minutes no one will mark. The terrible clarity this moment brings, the useless insight, the unbroken dark. Dana Gioia unbrokenvoicedark
