Dana Gioia offers a spiritual reflection on beauty in the Christian life by exploring famous texts involving beauty, including Psalm 29, Plato, Keats, Wilde, and Dostoevsky. He asserts that beauty is too often neglected in the vision of Christian life.
Former Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, Dana Gioia is an internationally acclaimed and award-winning poet. A native Californian, Gioia is a graduate of both Stanford and Harvard Universities. Gioia has published three full-length collections of poetry, as well as eight chapbooks. His poetry collection, Interrogations at High Noon, won the 2002 American Book Award. An influential critic, Gioia’s 1991 volume Can Poetry Matter? was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle award, and is credited with helping to revive the role of poetry in American public culture. Dana Gioia left the NEA in 2009. He came to USC in the fall of 2011 to become Judge Widney Professor of Poetry and Public Culture.