Interview with Christina Vick
Louisiana Review, Fall/Winter 04-05, volume 4

Christina Vick: When did you first conceive a love for literature?

Dana Gioia: I can't ever remember a time when I did not love poems and stories, but who knows how it all began? Oddly, I don't recall my parents ever reading books to me, but my mother often read or recited poems. I remember hearing hundreds of poems as a child. As soon as I learned to read, I devoured books. We had—because of political graft—an enormous library in my otherwise rundown hometown. I used to go there after school and wander the shelves. No one ever advised me on what to read, so I sampled everything. On the same visit I might bring home a book of Roman history, another of horror stories, and a third of Italian paintings. Reading was in many ways more real to me than my daily life. It opened up a world of possibilities beyond the dreary limits of working-class, urban Los Angeles.

CV: Were there any special circumstances in your childhood that made books so important to you?

Gioia: I spent a great deal of time alone. Both of my parents worked. My first brother wasn't born until I was six, and except for my cousins next door there were almost no children in my neighborhood, which was made up mostly of small cheap apartments. Our home, however, was full of books, records, and musical scores from my uncle, Theodore Ortiz, who had served in the Merchant Marines before dying in a plane crash in 1955. He was an old-style proletariat intellectual who spent all of his money on music and literature. His library lined nearly every room and spilled over into the garage. There were books in six languages and hundreds of classical LPs. My parents never read the books or played the records, but they kept them for sentimental reasons. The books were not especially interesting to a child—the novels of Thomas Mann, the plays of George Bernard Shaw, Pushkin in Russian, Cervantes in Spanish—but growing up with this large library around us exercised a strong magic on me, and later on my brother Ted.

CV: At what point in your life did you know that you wanted to be a poet?

Gioia: I remember quite exactly when I decided to become a poet. I was a college sophomore studying in Vienna on a Stanford exchange program. I had gone to Europe as a decisive gesture to figure out if I really wanted to be a composer. Living abroad for the first time and speaking a foreign language, I brooded a great deal in my room or else wandered the labyrinthine streets of the inner city in a fever of loneliness. Soon I found myself constantly reading and writing poetry-both in English and German. By the time I returned to America, I had decided to be a poet.

CV: Who or what do you read for pleasure or inspiration?

Gioia: I read all the time—newspapers, magazines, journals, and books-usually several books at once. I don't read as many novels now as I did when I was younger, though I still read forty or fifty a year. Now I tend to read more biographies and history. I also read theological and philosophical books. And, of course, I read—and reread—poetry all the time. I find myself habitually rereading certain books and authors, especially Virgil, Horace, St. Augustine, Shakespeare, and the Bible. I read science fiction for fun at bedtime. I also devour classical music and opera magazines. I sometimes worry if I have spent too much of my life reading, but how much narrower my life would have been without books.

CV: Who are your favorite authors?

Gioia: I have too many to list, especially poets. Some of my favorite novelists include Stendhal, Balzac, James, Cather, and Nabokov. I have a special passion for the short story, which seems to me perhaps the greatest single achievement of American literature, and I adore the short work of Poe, Cheever, Hemingway, O'Connor, Faulkner, Porter, Welty, Malamud, and Carver—though I would award Chekhov top international honors in the form. Philosophers and theologians like St. Augustine, Albert Schweitzer, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Thomas Merton, Friedrich Nietzsche, Miguel de Unamuno, Mircea Eliade, Marshall McLuhan, Jacques Maritain, and Georg Lukacs have all been important to me.

CV: Who have been your mentors? What influence have they had on your professional and personal life?

Gioia: I have moved around a great deal in my adult life and changed my profession three times—from academics to business to writing. No one person served as a mentor across all those changes, but at particular points in my life certain people had a crucial influence. The older writers who helped me the most—not so much in terms of external assistance but in internal clarification—were Robert Fitzgerald, Elizabeth Bishop, Donald Davie, Howard Moss, and Fredrick Morgan. Each helped me in a different way sometimes just for a short but critical period. There have also been some important relationships with older writers who were not so much mentors as dear friends—like Donald Justice, John Haines, Daniel Hoffman, X. J. Kennedy, William Jay Smith, Janet Lewis, William Maxwell, and Anne Stevenson.

CV: What influence have these mentors had on you?

Gioia: They provided useful models of what a writer's life might be like. Their work also kept my standards high. Each relationship was necessarily different. Elizabeth Bishop, for example, encouraged me, whereas Donald Davie discouraged me. Both interventions helped me develop as a writer. Robert Fitzgerald taught me essential things about poetic craft. He also provided me with a model of a modern Catholic man of letters. Frederick Morgan quietly encouraged me to write in my own way. I should also add that these writers were all remarkable human beings. Knowing them confirmed my sense of the importance of friendship, generosity, and integrity in literary life.

CV: Do you compose a poem in longhand or on a computer? What is the reason for your choice? Do you think the electronic age has helped or hindered creative writing?

Gioia: My methods are quite primitive. My poems begin as words in the air. I talk to myself-usually while pacing the room or walking outside. (Any observer would assume I was mad.) After I coax a line or two aloud, I jot it down. Very slowly and painstakingly I shape those lines and phrases into a poem. I pay equal attention to the way the poem sounds and how it works on the page. Only after many handwritten drafts do I type the poem up. That transition allows me to see the poem differently and revise it further. Since I believe that poetry not only originates in the body but also communicates largely through physical sound, I am skeptical of the putative advances of the electronic age. Though computers offer great convenience, they cannot substitute for direct physical embodiment of one's medium.

CV: Mark Twain, famous for his prose style, once said, "The difference between the right word and the nearly right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug." How do you know when you have the found the "right" word for a poem?

Gioia: This is an excellent question because so often the expressive effect of a line or stanza depends upon a single word. In poetry no effect is too small to matter. I revise a great deal and often focus on a particular word or phrase which I instinctively feel is crucial to the poem's impact. I like to combine words in a way that initially seems slightly odd but also oddly appropriate. I hope to discover a new combination that the language was waiting to have happen.

CV: When you begin work on a poem, what is your method? Do you have the poem, or the concept of the poem, in its entirety in your mind before you set it down in words, or is writing the poem a process of discovery?

Gioia: My poetic method is best described as confusion, followed by madness, exhilaration, and despair. I advise others to avoid my conspicuously bad example. For me, a poem begins as a powerful physical sensation. I can feel the poem in my throat and temples—a sudden illumination that is mostly beyond words but which is also partially embodied in a few specific words. That line or phrase suddenly opens a doorway. I usually have no idea what the final poem might be beyond its opening line. Writing the poem is discovering what one meant to say. People who aren't poets have trouble understanding how mysterious the process is.

CV: Many of your poems seem so heartfelt and personal, particularly the poems in your recent collection, Interrogations at Noon. I'm thinking especially the title poem, which discusses "the better man I might have been, / Who chronicles the life I've never led," as well as "Curriculum Vitae," "A California Requiem," and certainly "Pentecost" seem to speak to the reader about the author. To what extent do you chronicle your own experiences, and to what extent do you adopt a persona in your poems?

Gioia: My poems are personal but almost never entirely autobiographical. I combine my own experiences with observations from other people often adding elements of pure fantasy to create situations and stories that feel true. I deliberately try to eliminate myself in literal terms from the poem. The speaker of the poem may resemble me, but he or she is also a surrogate for the reader. Paradoxically, I find that the more I invent the more candid and truthful I become.

CV: How does the audience affect your poetry? By that I mean, when you give a reading of your poems, does that situation dictate your choice of poems to be read?

Gioia: When I write poetry, I don't consider the audience except in the most general terms—as fellow human beings who share the English language. But when I give a public poetry reading, I always consider my immediate audience. I don't worry much about its level of literary sophistication. If a poem is good enough, it should communicate at some essential level to most audiences. What I consider mostly is each audience's range of life experience. To understand a poem it helps to have lived at least a little of its contents. I take readings seriously. The sort of poetry I love best is meant to be spoken aloud and heard.

CV: Does the act of reading in public transform the experience of those poems for you? What do you wish your audience to receive or take away from a reading?

Gioia: Yes, over time the act of giving poetry readings has gradually transformed my attitude toward my own poems. Now that the finished poems exist independently of me in print I find that I am merely one of their readers, and I begin to see them very differently. They often mean things I never initially realized or intended.

CV: In the title essay of your 1992 collection, Can Poetry Matter?, you lamented the fact that "most poetry is published in journals that address an insular audience of literary professions." Nine years later, do you see any reasons for optimism about the dissemination of good and accessible poetry to a large reading public?

Gioia: A great deal has changed since the publication of Can Poetry Matter?—some for the good, some for the worse. The most important development has been the astonishing growth of the poetry world outside the university. There has been an explosion of poetry readings, festivals, broadcasts, and conferences based in libraries, bookstores, galleries, and communities. (I like to think my original essay had something to do with inspiring academic outsiders to build these new enterprises since many people have written me letters saying so, but perhaps I unduly flatter myself.) These new poetry venues range from the sublime to the ridiculous, but collectively they have had the effect of democratizing our literary culture. Most of this activity happens on a local basis, so it has hardly challenged the established reputation-making power of New York and the Northeast, but this new bohemia does allow poets to speak directly to a broader and more diverse audience than ever before.

CV: Writing has been called a lonely profession because it is performed of necessity in solitude. Do you have a support system—family, friends, colleagues—people who offer encouragement in your practice of what is generally considered, in America at least, an unorthodox profession?

Gioia: Writing is mostly a solitary endeavor—sometimes terribly so. For many years I wrote after work and on the weekends. I had to give up a great many things to make the time for poetry. That decision exacted its price in human terms, but I paid it gladly because I felt most truly myself, most intensely alive when writing or reading. Now my life is even more solitary. I no longer work in a busy office but alone in a studio across the hill from my house. Many days I see no one except my family—and a great many animals. If things go badly, my life can become very lonely. I accept that loneliness as a necessary part of who I am. I should be lost without my friends, even though I seldom see them. Solitary people feel friendship deeply. There are a few fellow poets I love quite deeply. They sustain me.

CV: In your experience, can writing poetry be a therapeutic exercise as well as an imaginative, creative endeavor? Do you sometimes turn to writing poetry as a means of coping with difficulties in life, past and present?

Gioia: I associate therapeutic poetry with bad writing—especially my own. I guess there is some therapeutic aspect in much poetry, but it also seems to me that it concerns the emotional impulse behind the poem rather than the poem itself. I have often sat down and poured my suffering soul onto some innocent piece of paper, but surrendering to a powerful subjective emotional state does not create an imaginative structure that will replicate the experience in the reader's mind. A poem is a mysterious verbal device, a sort of magic spell, directed not at the author but the reader. If a poem is therapeutic, then the patient must be the reader not the writer.

CV: In your experience, how much of writing poetry is art, and how much is craft?

Gioia: All art depends on craft. Without proper technique a poet, however talented, can amount to very little. Despite the proliferation of graduate writing programs-perhaps because of them—our age has seen both a denigration and ignorance of poetic craft. Today any poet who wants to master verse-craft must do it mostly on his or her own. Technique is the necessary beginning, but it is only a means to an expressive end. Having something genuinely compelling to express is essential. That gift can't be taught.

CV: Your considerable background in the business world might come as a surprise to readers familiar only with your poetry. Could you comment on this background?

Gioia: I originally went to graduate school in literature, but it seemed a bad place for me as a writer. I liked it too much. Harvard aggravated my inherent tendency to be overly intellectual and self-conscious. Working in business gave me a chance to construct a different sort of writing life-more private, independent, and contemplative. I went to Stanford Business School, and in 1977 I joined General Foods in New York. When I resigned fifteen years later, I was a Vice President. I still miss the people I worked with. They were smart, friendly, and funny. There were a few idiots, scoundrels, and egomaniacs, but no more than I've encountered in literary life.

CV: Were you engaged in creative writing at the same time that you were involved in a business career?

Gioia: Yes. I went into business to be a poet. For me, business was always just a job, even though I ended up doing quite well. I would work ten or twelve hours a day at the office, and then I tried to squeeze two or three hours of writing in each night at home. It wasn't easy, but I managed—mostly by giving up other things.

CV: Did you consider these pursuits antithetical or complementary to each other?

Gioia: I never considered business as either antithetical or complementary to my writing. Business and poetry were simply different occupations.

CV: In your essay "Business and Poetry," in which you create an intriguing exploration of such poets as T. S. Eliot, Wallace Stevens, James Dickey, and others who sustained themselves and their families in business careers, you pose the question: "How did their business careers affect the lives and works of these poets?" This issue has personal relevance to you. Would you answer the same question you posed in your essay? How has your experience in the business world affected your literary work?

Gioia: My years in business offered at least two advantages. First, they allowed me to develop as a poet at my own pace and in my own way. I had no pressure to publish or need to conform to any academic or intellectual fashion. I made my own necessary mistakes and discoveries. Working in isolation, my most intense literary relationships were with the great dead, the most demanding and yet attentive colleagues. Had I stayed at Harvard I would have been too vulnerable to the many captivating influences around me. Neglect, obscurity, and loneliness are the necessary nourishment of a young poet.

Second, working in business greatly broadened my life experience. It permitted me-indeed forced me-to see the world and literature from a different angle than I had in graduate school. Working with intelligent but non-literary people for nearly twenty years made me conscious of the cultural elitism I had acquired at Stanford and Harvard. I no longer took certain assumptions for granted. Most important, I understood the importance of writing in a way that does not exclude intelligent people.

CV: Could you discuss your writing life outside the university?

Gioia: It is an odd enterprise in our society to make a living as a poet outside academia. It's definitely not a career for the faint of heart. The poems—no matter how good—won't pay the bills. I work seven days a week. I travel constantly giving readings and lectures—always working on airplanes and in hotel rooms. I edit anthologies, write for BBC Radio, review books and music, and collaborate with composers. The practical challenge is to pay the bills, which I've gradually learned how to do. The deeper challenge is primarily spiritual-how to create and sustain a passionate sense of living the right life. That is far more difficult. Loneliness, exhaustion, disappointment, and despair are always nearby.

CV: You have recently published an intriguing libretto for the opera Nosferatu, based on the silent German expressionist film directed by F. W. Murnau. What drew you to this particular retelling of the Dracula myth?

Gioia: The subject chose me. I was looking for an idea for a libretto, and by lucky coincidence I happened to read an essay on Murnau by my friend Gilberto Perez. By the time I had finished the piece I knew that this was the subject, the only possible subject for the opera the composer Alva Henderson and I were planning. What drew me to Nosferatu was the depth and complexity of the heroine, and the symbolic possibilities of the vampire myth. Opera is the last surviving form of poetic theater, and I wanted a subject that would allow my imagination a wild freedom.

CV: To what extent did your background in musical composition influence your decision?

Gioia: I knew I wanted to write a libretto that revived and explored traditional musical forms-arias, duets, trios, choruses, and ensembles. I also wanted the language and the dramatic structure to be inherently lyrical. I had no interest in writing a prose drama to be set to music. I tried to give every scene a dramatic shape embodied in musical and poetic structures.

CV: When can we hope to see a staging of your opera?

Gioia: Rimrock Opera will mount the world premiere in Billings, Montana and Boise, Idaho. Meanwhile two concert performances are being staged in Chattanooga. Two groups in New York also want to stage Nosferatu—Verse Theatre Manhattan and the Derriere Guard Arts Festival—but it remains to be seen if they can raise the money. Opera is an extraordinarily expensive art form. When we began the project, I told Alva that I wanted to perform excerpts of our work-in-progress because even successful new operas achieve so few productions. We have already produced showcases in Georgia, California, Texas, Illinois, Connecticut, Colorado, and Pennsylvania-and portions of the music have been broadcast by the BBC, KPFA, and several NPR affiliates-so a surprising number of people have heard some of the music.

CV: You have published a number of college textbooks, including Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, and Drama co-edited by X. J. Kennedy, an anthology I have used for a number of years. Has this been a rewarding experience for you?

Gioia: Editing anthologies has been enormously interesting and rewarding. It has also been exhausting. To edit them responsibly, I must constantly read and reread poems, stories, plays, and scholarship to make the right selections. I am also perpetually writing critical overviews, historical notes, author biographies, and commentaries. In the dozen or so anthologies I have published in the last decade, I have published well over a million words of critical prose. I sometimes feel I am living in an eternal finals week. My private goal has been to manage this task without ever letting the writing become dull or insipid-in other words never to let it sound like most textbooks.

CV: Why do you work so hard on textbooks?

Gioia: Because they are so important. A great anthology can change a student's life. A dull one can turn him or her away from literature forever. I take anthologies seriously because they represent the logical extension of my concerns as a poet and critic. What better way is there to correct, improve, and expand literary taste? I also love to bring new or neglected writers to a broader audience.

CV: On what current projects are you working?

Gioia: I have too many projects. Graywolf Press will publish a tenth anniversary edition of Can Poetry Matter? in late 2002, and I am writing a special introduction about the reception and impact of the book. I am also putting together a new collection of critical essays. I am now just finishing up two large anthologies on twentieth century American poetry and poetics. I'm co-editing these ambitious and comprehensive books with David Mason and Meg Schoerke. The critical apparatus is itself several hundred pages long, and it gives me the opportunity to discuss writers and issues I have not written on before. I also plan to edit an anthology of California poetry with Chryss Yost for Heyday Books, as part of the California Legacy Project. I am also writing a second opera libretto-a phantasmagoric one-act work that mixes comedy and tragedy-for the composer Paul Salerni. And I hope to finish a few new poems. No rest for the wicked.

CV: You recently won the American Book Award for Interrogations at Noon. Has
the prize changed your life in any way?

Gioia: The award made me slightly more respectable in official circles. More important, it greatly impressed my nine-year-old son, Mike, who likes the gold-foil sticker that went on the cover of my book. I was pleased to win a prize for my poetry since my criticism so often dominates my public image. I was also delighted to win an award given by a jury of writers, who were all strangers. Mostly, I consider the event sheer good luck, which should be enjoyed but not taken too seriously.

CV: What advice do you have for poets who are relatively new to their craft but who want to pursue it as a serious endeavor?

Gioia: Read widely and memorize the poems that move or delight you. Immerse yourself in the medium. All writers begin as readers. I also recommend spending your twenties lonely, broke, and unhappily in love. It worked for me.

Dr. Christina Vick is an associate professor of English at Louisiana State University at Eunice. She received her education at Sam Houston State University (B.A., M.A.), Texas A&M University (Ph.D.), and in the public schools and movie theatres of her hometown, Huntsville, Texas. Dr. Vick's main interest lies in researching and writing about film and literature to film adaptation. Currently she is working on a project involving the plays, screenplays, and memoirs of fellow Texan Horton Foote, as well as on a paper exploring the ethnic mother-daughter dynamic in the recent popular films My Big Fat Greek Wedding and Real Women Have Curves.