What happens to poetry in a culture that no longer depends on books?
Dana Gioia dismisses the standard clichés about poetry’s precarious
place in a society transformed by electronic media. Looking at both the
literary world and popular entertainment, Gioia’s provocative and
original title essay offers a compelling account of how new
technologies and innovative forms of oral poetry—rap, slam, spoken
word, performance art—are revitalizing the art in unexpected ways. As
recent surveys of American reading indicate, the survival of literature
in an age of electronic overload is a pressing issue.
In a
brilliant array of essays that test the pulse of traditional and
contemporary poetry, Gioia ponders the future of the written word and
how it might find its most relevant incarnations.
With the clarity, wit, and feisty intelligence that made Can Poetry Matter?
one of the most important and controversial books about literature and
contemporary American society, Gioia again demonstrates his unique gift
of observation and uncanny prognostication to examine our complicated
everyday relationship to art.
