A POEM BY DANA GIOIA⠀•⠀A NEW TRANSLATION BY GUSTAVO SOLÓRZANO-ALFARO

All poets write poems, but few impact poetry itself. Dana Gioia certainly has. From serving as chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts to his decades long advocacy for traditional verse forms and non-autobiographical narrative, his work has often been in beautiful opposition to prevailing winds. He has written volumes of criticism and resurrected dead poets from the grave. Few are as deliberate, and few have contributed as much.

In Words – newly translated by Gustavo Solórzano-Alfaro into Spanish alongside the original – Gioia unwraps a meditation on the ephemeral nature of language and a celebration for the unnamed and unnoticed. In a peculiar way, only words can demonstrate the modesty and the limits of words – a difficult task, but borne beautifully in Gioia’s capable hands.