The Celebrated poet and author of *Can Poetry Matter?*offers another
bold, insightful collection of essays on literature's changing place in
contemporary culture
Poetry is an art that preceded writing, and it will survive television
and video games . . . The problem won't be finding an audience. The
challenge will be writing well enough to deserve one.
In Disappearing Ink, Dana Gioia stakes the claim for poetry's place
amid American popular culture, where poetry in its latest oral forms
-rap, slam, performance-is transforming the traditional literary culture
of the printed page. But, as the seminal title essay asks, "What is a
conscientious critic supposed to do with an Eminem or Jay-Z?" In a
brilliant array of essays that test the pulse of traditional and
contemporary poetry, Gioia ponders the future of the written word and
how it might find its most relevant incarnation.
With the clarity, wit, and feisty intelligence that made Can Poetry
Matter? one of the most important and controversial books about
literature and contemporary American society, Gioia again demonstrates
his unique abilities of observation and uncanny prognostication to
examine our complicated everyday relationship to art.