99 Poems

February 15, 2016
Gioia (Pity the Beautiful) displays his immense talents for structure and for tackling difficult subject matter in this first new and selected volume of his career. A major figure in the late 20th-century return to formalism, Gioia works largely within tight arrangements of meter, though he usually eschews rhyme, and employs simple metaphors and straightforward narratives to reach an emotional core. In “Planting a Sequoia,” about the death of Gioia’s firstborn infant son, tragedy and heartbreak are expressed in plainspoken terms: “In Sicily a father plants a tree to celebrate his first son’s birth—/ But today we kneel in the cold planting you.” The book is organized by theme—mystery, place, remembrance, imagination, stories, songs, and love—and Gioia’s careful diction and dedication to the line lend gravitas to even the most quotidian subjects. Even where he breaks his adherence to classical forms, as in the humorous “Title Index to My Next Book of Poems,” he follows tight organizational principles. Similarly, the form of the opening poem, “The Burning Ladder,” reflects its subject: the dream ladder of the biblical Jacob. Readers searching for classically styled poetry that is unflinchingly sincere and honest will find what they need in the voice of this master poet.

Starred review from March 15, 2016
Rather than chronologically, Gioia presents his career retrospective in seven sections, five thematic Mystery, Remembrance, Imagination, Place, and Love and two, Stories and Songs, generic. The mystery of the first is by turns spiritual and existential, the former in The Burning Ladder, in which Jacob sleeps oblivious to the seraphim, and Prayer at Winter Solstice; the latter in The Road and New Year's. Remembrance is where to find the shattering Special Treatments Ward, on Gioia's first child's death. Imagination is full of wry humor, seriously wistful in Elegy for Vladimir de Pachmann, ruefully ironic in A Short History of Tobacco, defiantly commonsensical in A Curse on Geographers. The poems of Place are predominantly Californian, like Gioia; they're visited by fellow Golden Staters Raymond Chandler and the Beach Boys as well as, elsewhere, John Cheever. The stories are very much in the criminal and horrific mode, not untinged by other qualities, even humor in Film Noir, as fine an abstract of that genre as has ever been written. The songs genuinely are musical, reflecting Gioia's training in music, and the personal and domestic pieces in Love often commend themselves to singing, too. But then, virtually everything here resounds, like the work of another elegantly musical poet whose corpus bulks little larger than Gioia'sA. E. Housman.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)