Quotessence
Home / Authors / Dana Gioia
Dana Gioia

Dana Gioia Quotes

Poet

Filter quotes by topic

AllPoetryArtPoetry QuotesLiteratureCatholic LiteratureCatholic WritersVerseCatholicNamesPoet

Famous Dana Gioia Quotes

“The great and present danger to American literature is the growing homogeneity of our writers, especially the younger generation. Often raised in several places in no specific cultural or religious community, educated with no deep connection to a particular region, history, or tradition, and now employed mostly in academia, the American writer is becoming as standardized as the American car—functional, streamlined, and increasingly interchangeable.”

WritersPublishingWriters On WritingAmerican CultureLiterary CriticismAmerican WritersArts And CultureLiterary Culture
Book:The Catholic Writer Today: And Other Essays
Create image

“The Catholic writer has the inestimable advantage of a profound and truthful worldview that has been articulated, explored, and amplified by two thousand years of art and philosophy, a tradition whose symbols, stories, personalities, and concepts and correspondences add enormous resonance to any artist’s work.”

Writing AdviceChristian LiteratureCatholic LiteratureCatholic WritersChristian WritingCatholic ArtChristian WriterCatholic Writing
Book:The Catholic Writer Today: And Other Essays
Create image

“Current Catholic worship often ignores the essential connection between truth and beauty, body and soul, at the center of the Catholic worldview. The Church requires that we be faithful, but must we also be deaf, dumb, and blind? I deserve to suffer for my sins, but must so much of that punishment take place in church?”

SoulBodySufferingChurchSinEssentialsWorshipDeserveConnectionsCatholicBlindCurrentsPunishmentDumbFaithfulDeafWorldviewBeing FaithfulTruth And Beauty
Author:Dana Gioia
Create image

“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.”

EarthNamesViewsCuttingTreeBirdClaimsDiedRefuseBreastsPossessed
Book:99 Poems: New & Selected
Create image

“Paradoxically, the simpler poetry is, the more difficult it becomes for a critic to discuss intelligently. Trained to explicate, the critic often loses the ability to evaluate literature outside the critical act. A work is good only in proportion to the richness and complexity of interpretations it provokes.”

LiteratureDifficultLosesAbilityCriticsCriticalComplexityProportionPoetry IsInterpretationProvokingRichnessEvaluate
Book:Can Poetry Matter?: Essays on Poetry and American Culture
Create image