Dana Gioia

Dana Gioia did not follow a conventional path to become a poet. He attended Stanford Business School, and eventually became a vice-president for General Foods. He is the author of four poetry collections, and was recently (2003—2009) the chair of the National Endowment for the Arts. His influential essay “Can Poetry Matter?” first appeared in The Atlantic Monthly in 1991.

The following poem is from his new collection, Pity the Beautiful (Graywolf Press). In an Image interview he said this poem “offers a set of beatitudes that praise the suffering and renunciation necessary to make us spiritually alert. It celebrates the transformative and redemptive nature of suffering—one of the central spiritual truths of Christianity as well as one easily forgotten in our materialist consumer culture...”

Prayer at Winter Solstice

Blessed is the road that keeps us homeless.
Blessed is the mountain that blocks our way.

Blessed are hunger and thirst, loneliness and all forms of desire.
Blessed is the labor that exhausts us without end.

Blessed are the night and the darkness that blinds us.
Blessed is the cold that teaches us to feel.

Blessed are the cat, the child, the cricket, and the crow.
Blessed is the hawk devouring the hare.

Blessed are the saint and the sinner who redeem each other.
Blessed are the dead calm in their perfection.

Blessed is the pain that humbles us.
Blessed is the distance that bars our joy.

Blessed is this shortest day that makes us long for light.
Blessed is the love that in losing we discover.

This is the first Kingdom Poets post about Dana Gioia: second post

Entry written by D.S. Martin. He is the award-winning author of the poetry collections Poiema (Wipf & Stock) and So The Moon Would Not Be Swallowed (Rubicon Press). They are both available at: www.dsmartin.ca