Dana Gioia is a poet and critic. He has published five full-length collections of verse, most recently 99 Poems: New & Selected, which won the Poets' Prize as the best new book of the year. His third collection, Interrogations at Noon, was awarded the American Book Award. An influential critic, Gioia's controversial volume, Can Poetry Matter? was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. The book is credited with helping revive the role of poetry in American public culture. Gioia has also edited or co-edited two dozen best-selling literary anthologies, including An Introduction to Poetry (with X. J. Kennedy) and Best American Poetry 2018. His essays and reviews have appeared in The New Yorker, Atlantic, Washington Post, New York Times, Hudson Review, and other journals. Gioia has served as the Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts and as California State Poet Laureate. He is currently the Judge Widney Professor of Poetry and Public Culture at the University of Southern California. He divides his time between Los Angeles and Sonoma County, California.

PrefaceLonely Impulse of Delight: One Reader's ChildhoodStudying with Miss BishopRemembering Robert FitzgeraldA Week with John Cheever"How Nice to Meet You, Mr. Dickey"Letters from the Bahamas: Memoir of a Poet I Never MetPostscript: Being OutedAppendix: A Conversation with John Cheever

Dana Gioia recalls his experience with two great teachers and other youthful encounters with poets-famous and unknown.