Washington National Cathedral

The Sunday Forum: Critical Issues in the Light of Faith

The Very Rev. Samuel T. Lloyd III, host

Dean Lloyd invites Dana Gioia into an intriguing discussion about “Why Words Matter: Poetry and Faith.” Gioia is credited with saving the National Endowment for the Arts at a time when it was severely embattled and nearly extinguished by Congress. He sought to create an institution that would bring art to all Americans while being true both to art and to democracy. The efforts succeeded.

“I think that what took Washington by surprise was that we were actually naïve, honest, and dedicated idealists,” he recalls. “They had no defense against that.” The agency’s Shakespeare program has brought 1.3 million children to see a play by Shakespeare. “I think that’s the Lord’s work,” Gioia says.

Describing himself as having been “a working-class Catholic kid from L.A.,” Gioia credits art with opening up the world for him. He emphasizes the importance of bringing the arts to all children, to expand life’s possibilities. “I worry that we live in a country in which the arts and arts education have become a function of your parents’ income,” he says. “If you’re poor, you have no access to this. And I think that’s unworthy of a democracy.”

“I became a poet by accident,” Gioia says. When he was a child, his mother entranced him by reciting “Annabelle Lee” and other poems. Gioia expected to work as a musician but discovered, at age twenty, that he had greater talent as poet. Graduate school at Harvard did not, contrary to expectations, teach him how to write but instead taught him the narrow, arcane language of literary theory. After working at several “lousy” jobs, Gioia took a job in marketing at General Foods and promised himself that he would continue to write poetry and read literature.

In 1991 Gioia published an essay, “Can Poetry Matter,” which provoked wide discussion about the role of the art form. He wants poetry to be “accessible,” but he stipulates that T. S. Eliot’s work is accessible; the problem he sees with accessibility is that poetry has retreated to the rarefied world of a few scholars. Gioia finds that the “major defect” of much contemporary poetry is that “it’s narcissistic.” While calling for accessibility, he does not want any art form to be “dumbed down.”

About Dana Gioia

Dana Gioia is chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts. He is credited with saving the National Endowment for the Arts at a time when it was severely embattled and nearly extinguished by Congress.

In 1991 Gioia published an essay, “Can Poetry Matter,” which provoked wide discussion about the role of the art form.