About Dana Gioia
Michael Dana Gioia (; born December 24, 1950) is an American poet, literary critic, literary translator, and essayist. Since the early 1980s, Gioia has been considered part of the controversial and countercultural literary movements within American poetry known as New Formalism, which advocates the continued writing of poetry in rhyme and meter, and New Narrative, which advocates the telling of non-autobiographical stories. At the request of U.S. President George W. Bush, Gioia served between 2003 and 2009 as the chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA). In November 2006, Business Week magazine profiled Gioia as "The Man Who Saved the NEA". Five years after Gioia left office, The Washington Post referred to him as one of "two of the NEA's strongest leaders". In December 2015, Gioia became the California State Poet Laureate. Gioia has published six books of poetry and five volumes of literary criticism as well as opera libretti, song cycles, translations, and over two dozen literary anthologies. Gioia's poetry has been anthologized in The Norton Anthology of Poetry and The Oxford Book of American Poetry. Gioia published translations of poets Eugenio Montale and Seneca the Younger.
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