What is poetry? What is its purpose? Who is it for? The poet Dana Gioia Hosted by Russ Roberts Explore these and other questions They discuss the meaning of poetry, and the conversation touches on many personal topics, including death, loss, family, and our common humanity. At the beginning of each episode, Roberts mentions EconTalk’s tagline, “Conversations for Curious People,” and this conversation truly fits that tagline as the pair explore what poetry in its various forms means to them and their families.
Dana Gioia is a writer, poet, critic, and librettist for opera and jazz. She has served as Poet Laureate of California and president of the National Endowment for the Arts, and has served as a public advocate for the arts.
Below is an excerpt from Gioia’s words about his power as a poet:
You see, when I was an aspiring writer at Stanford and Harvard, trying to figure out how to make my mark on the world, I had this English department idea of what poetry was, and how it had to do with great traditions and the history of ideas. But now I see poetry as something that’s a linguistic device of your own making, half a game, half a kind of spiritual quest, but where the best thing you can do is usefulto make these words useful to people’s real life dilemmas. With any luck, people will use your poems in ways you never imagined.
But something very strange happened: I wrote a poem and people started talking about it in a totally different context. And then I read the poem and realized it applied to that context just as well. In fact, I liked that poem as much as my own poems, because poems are like kids: when they leave home, they do things that you never imagined, and you might not approve of. But what you’re trying to do is to help them live an independent life.
This may sound really weird, but if my poems were published, I would just be one of the readers. I’m probably the best-Got information But if they belong anywhere, it is to the language, and therefore to the readers of that language.
Gioia and Roberts agree on the power poetry has in our daily lives, whether we are writers or economists, mothers or children, opera lovers or pop song lovers. Do you agree? Their discussion reminded me of the fragments of poetry I memorized when I was younger, in high school and college, and how they would occasionally resurface in my daily life. For me, as an avid choirboy for many years, many of these poems were songs that became etched in my brain almost by chance, but through their words and rhythms, continue to have some relevance to my emotions and thoughts even after so many years.
What did you learn from Gioia and Roberts’ discussion? It might be helpful to consider some of the following questions:
1 – Much of Roberts and Gioia’s conversation is about the power of poetry to connect us to past and future generations. Russ quotes a line from Tom Stoppard’s play “Septimus.” Arcadia:
We cast off as we pick them up, like travellers who must carry them in their arms. What we drop is picked up by those behind. The procession is so long, and life so short. We die in the procession. But nothing is lost in the procession, for there is nothing outside it. The lost plays of Sophocles will be found, bit by bit, or rewritten in another language. Ancient cures for diseases will be revealed again. Discoveries of mathematics glimpsed and forgotten will be rediscovered. Do you not think, my lady, that if all of Archimedes was hidden in the great library of Alexandria, we should not find a corkscrew?
SophoclesAs a great tragic dramatist he was certainly something of a poet. Archimedes But the ancient physicians belong to what we characterize as science. What about other human expressions and ideas? Might scientific or economic ideas also play a role in this poetry that connects man to man?
2 – Gioia describes poetry as “something that should be.” heardPoetry, he points out, has historically always been linked to song and performance. This may be true to some extent of any knowledge expressed in human language, but it is more than just a visual representation on a page. Can ideas exist independently of argument? To what extent is poetry both conversation and performance?
3 – At the beginning of the conversation, Gioia reads a poem she wrote. See you at the lighthouseIt is dedicated to his cousin who died young. A discussion of the poem itself begins. It contains references to jazz, Yeats, classical mythology and memories of the poet’s cousin. How do these references function within the poetic unit to evoke meaning? What do they say about Gioia himself or his cousin?
4 – Gioia states that the Latin word for poetry is the same as the word for song. Carmen. Contemporary popular music often functions like poetry. Is there a poem that has stayed with you throughout your life? What about it is so meaningful and why do you remember it? If music is used in poetry, what makes it more appealing? What about music is necessary for poetry, and is it even necessary? Does this apply equally to music poetry across genres and eras, such as JS Bach, opera, ancient epic poetry, Bob Dylan, Taylor Swift (Tortured Poets Department), Kendrick Lamar, etc.?
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Shannon Chamberlain The Poet’s Freedom: Thomas Wyatt as a Character in Wolf Hall The Reading Room and, relatedly, Garth Bond’s The Poet’s Freedom 2: Thomas Wyatt and Petrarch
Sarah Squire’s J. Alfred Prufrock’s Opportunity Cost At EconLib
Sarah Squire upon Milton’s Poetry and Prose: From the Liberty Fund Rare Book Room Liberty’s Online Library
Confucius’s “Book of Songs” is the ancient Chinese “Book of Songs”. Liberty’s Online Library
The Poet and the Professor: Adam Smith’s Influence on Poet Robert Burns Adam SmithWorks
Adam Smith also teaches good teachings Adam SmithWorks
Imitative Art: Enjoying Adam Smith’s Artistic Opinions Adam SmithWorks
Ancient Views on the Value of Poetry In the Reading Room
The Poet as Intellectual: How Romantics Perceived Thomas Malthus In the Reading Room
Nancy Vander Veel has a BA in Classics from Samford University. She has taught high school Latin in the United States and has held program and fundraising roles at Paideia. She is based in Marburg, Germany, where she is currently completing an MA in European Social and Economic History at Philipps-University of Marburg.
