Last year marked the thirtieth anniversary of Dana Gioia’s Can Poetry Matter?, a follow-up to his famous 1991 article in The Atlantic. The article and book caused quite a stir. Gioia observed that poetry was no longer a part of intellectual life in America. It was not published in national newspapers or magazines. It was not memorized in school. It was not discussed at dinner parties or bars, and it never appeared in national discourse. Poetry had “become the specialized occupation of a relatively small and isolated group” who made almost no impact on the culture at large.
What made these observations so odd is that 1991 coincided with “a moment of unprecedented expansion for the art” of poetry. There were three graduate programs in creative writing in 1950. By 1990, there were nearly two hundred. A “proliferation of literary journals and presses” followed those programs—not because people couldn’t get enough poetry, Gioia argued, but because writing teachers desperately needed “professional validation.” Poetry was written to be published, not read, and publication had become a currency exchangeable for a job teaching creative writing.
