Dana Gioia

"The music that of common speech but slanted so that each detail sounds unexpected as a sharp inserted in a simple scale."

"Money. You dont know where its been, but you put it where your mouth is. And it talks."

"Teach us the names of what we have destroyed."

"Yet the stones remain less real to those who cannot name them, or read the mute syllables graven in silica. To see a red stone is less than seeing it as jasper — metamorphic quartz, cousin to the flint the Kiowa carved as arrowheads. To name is to know and remember."

"We are not as we were. Death has been our pentecost."

"We lived in places that we never knew. We could not name the birds perched on our sill, Or see the trees we cut down for our view. What we possessed we always chose to kill."We claimed the earth but did not hear her claim, And when we died, they laid us on her breast, But she refuses us — until we earn Forgiveness from the lives we dispossessed."

"How many voices have escaped you until now, the venting furnace, the floorboards underfoot, the steady accusations of the clock numbering the minutes no one will mark. The terrible clarity this moment brings, the useless insight, the unbroken dark."

"This is not work but a kind of workmanship. First out of paper, then from the body. To provoke thought into form, molded according to a measure. I think of a tailor who is his own fabric."

"What does an instinctively popular poet do in contemporary America, where serious poetry is no longer a popular art? The public whose values and sensibility he celebrates is unaware of his existence. Indeed, even if they were aware of his poetry, they would feel no need to approach it. Cut off from his proper audience, this poet feels little sympathy with the specialized minority readership that now sustains poetry either as a highly sophisticated verbal game or secular religion. His sensibility shows little similarity to theirs except for the common interest in poetry. And so the popular poet usually leads a marginal existence in literary life. His fellow poets look on him as an anomaly or an anachronism. Reviewers find him eminently unnewsworthy. Publishers see little prestige attached to printing his work. Critics, who have been trained to celebrate complexity, consider him an amiable simpleton."

"What we conceal Is always more than what we dare confide. Think of the letters that we write our dead."

"Audiences and critics acknowledge that a play or concerto gains force in great rendition. A good play may overcome bad staging. A great concerto may survive a poor soloist. But it is naturally assumed that a more accomplished performance intensifies the impact of the work. The plays text or concertos score does not change, but the right actors and musicians help realize its full potential. Among contemporary literary critics, however, one never encounters this notion in regard to books and printing. To recognize the sensual contributions of the physical elements of a book is somehow assumed to demean the spiritual purity of the text. To notice the book itself smacks of philistinism, and to make distinctions based on paper, binding, and typography brings accusations of elitism or decadence."

"Being so deeply rooted in one place and culture allows a genuine writer to experiment wildly with the material without ever losing touch with its essence."