News at Eleven: In his new volume, Pity the Beautiful,

there are poems that do address the outer world, but, as in his earlier books, the best poems depict extraordinarily tender, interior landscapes of spiritual and erotic longing. In his best poems, [Dana] Gioia gives public voice to a private world of elegy and regret, aspiring to speak for people rather than merely to them. After all, he can do that in his day job as much as he wishes; he is now Judge Widney Professor of Poetry and Public Culture at the University of Southern California. He may remain a public figure, but he is a poet of the inner life.

from The Philadelphia Inquirer: 'Pity the Beautiful': Dana Gioia's well-crafted poems of the passionate inner life

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