What is a poem? What is this supposed to do? To whom it is addressed ? Poet Dana Gioia and host Russ Roberts explore these questions and more as they talk about the meaning of poetry. The conversation touches on many personal topics: death, loss, family and our common humanity. At the start of each episode, Roberts mentions EconTalk’s slogan: “Conversations for the Curious.” This conversation is certainly fitting, as the two explore what poetry in various forms means to them and their families.
Dana Gioia’s career as a writer, poet, and critic spans multiple genres, including as a librettist for opera and jazz artists. He has led public outreach in the arts as Poet Laureate of the State of California and as Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts.
Here is an excerpt from Gioia on his powers as a poet:
You know, when I was an ambitious young writer at Stanford and Harvard and I was imagining how I would make my mark, I had this very English conception of what a poem is and its relationship to the great tradition and the history of ideas. But these days I think about what a poem is, this language instrument that you create, it’s half a game and half a kind of spiritual exploration. But the highest thing you can do is be useful, is that these words are useful to people facing the dilemmas of their real lives. If you’re lucky, they’ll find uses for your poem that you wouldn’t even imagine.
But I had a very strange thing when I wrote a poem and people were talking about it in a completely different context. And I read the poem and realized that it applied to this context as well. In fact, I loved it as much as mine. Because poems are like children. Once they leave the house, they do things you didn’t expect and may not approve of. But what you’re trying to do is make them capable of living an independent life.
I know this sounds very strange, but once my poems are published, I am simply one of the readers. I’m probably maybe the best-informed reader, but if they belong to something, they belong to the language, to the readers of the language.
Gioia and Roberts agree on the power of poetry in ordinary life, whether for a writer or an economist, a mother or a child, an opera lover or a pop song enthusiast. Do you agree? Their discussion reminded me of bits of poetry I had memorized when I was younger, as a high school student, and how they sometimes resurface in my daily life. As an enthusiastic chorister over the years, many of these poems are songs and have managed to embed themselves in my brain, almost by accident, but somehow remain, through their words and their rhythms, relevant to the emotions and thoughts I have years later.
What did you take away from Gioia and Roberts’ discussion? You may want to think about some of the questions below:
1 – Much of Roberts and Gioia’s conversation revolves around the power of poetry to connect us with past and future generations. Russ quotes a few lines from Septimus in Tom Stoppard’s play Arcadia:
We drop off by picking up, like travelers who must carry everything in their arms, and what we drop will be picked up by those behind. The procession is very long and life is very short. We die on the march. But there is nothing outside of walking, so nothing can be lost there. Sophocles’ missing plays will come back piece by piece, or be rewritten in another language. The ancient cures for disease will reveal themselves once again. The mathematical discoveries glimpsed and lost sight of will once again have their moment. Don’t you think, my lady, that if all of Archimedes had hidden in the great library of Alexandria, we would be short of a corkscrew?
Sophoclesas a great tragic playwright, was certainly a poet of sorts. Archimedes and the ancient physicians, however, belong to what we would call science. What about other forms of human expression and ideas? Do scientific or economic ideas also sometimes play this role of poems, connecting humans to humans?
2 – Gioia describes poetry as something that is “meant to be heard.” Historically, he points out, poetry has always been linked to song and performance. Perhaps this is true to some extent for all knowledge expressed in human language, it goes far beyond the simple visual representation on the page. Can ideas exist independently of discussion? To what extent is poetry a conversation as much as a performance?
3 – In the first part of the conversation, Gioia reads a poem he wrote, Meet me at the lighthouse. This is dedicated to his cousin, who died at a young age. This begins a discussion of the poem itself, which contains allusions to jazz, Yeats, and classical mythological subjects, as well as references to the poet’s memory of his cousin. How do these allusions work together within the unity of the poem to evoke meaning? What do they say about Gioia himself or his cousin?
4 – Gioia mentions that the Latin word for poem is the same as his word for song, Carmen. Modern popular music often functions like poetry. Is there a particular poem that has had an impact on you throughout your life? What was so significant about this poem and why do you remember it? If the poem has a musical setting, how does that enhance it? What is necessary for the poem in the music, or is it necessary at all? Does this also apply to different genres and eras of musical poetry: JS Bach, opera, ancient epic poems, Bob Dylan, Taylor Swift (from the tortured poets department), Kendrick Lamar?
Related podcasts
Dana Gioia on Learning, Poetry, and Studying with Miss BishopEconTalk
Dwayne bets on beauty, prison and the editorial staff, ÉconTalk
Cheryl Miller on Hertog and the humanities, The great antidote
Zack Weinersmith on Beowulf and Bea Wolf ÉconTalk
More to explore
Shannon Chamberlain on The Freedom of the Poets: Thomas Wyatt as the character Wolf Hall in the reading room and, in connection, at Garth Bond The Freedom of the Poets 2: Thomas Wyatt and Petrarch
Sarah Skwire’s J. Alfred Prufrock’s Opportunity Costs at EconLib
Sarah Skwire on Milton’s Poetry and Prose: From the Liberty Fund Rare Book Room at the Liberty Online Library
Confucius’King Shi, the old Chinese “poetry classic” at the Liberty Online Library
The Bard and the Professor: Adam Smith’s influence on the poet Robert Burns at AdamSmithWorks
Adam Smith also teaches good teaching at AdamSmithWorks
The Imitation Arts: A Little Fun with Adam Smith’s Artistic Opinions at AdamSmithWorks
Ancient Perspectives on the Value of Poetry in the reading room
The poet as intellectual: how the romantics attacked Thomas Malthus in the reading room
Nancy Vander Veer holds a bachelor’s degree in classics from Samford University. She taught high school Latin in the United States and held programmatic and fundraising positions at Paideia. Based in Marburg, Germany, she is currently completing a master’s degree in European social and economic history at Philipps-Universität Marburg.
