Different works have different impacts, Gioia says.

Question: How do you reach your audience?

Dana Gioia: Well there’s different works with different impacts. I mean what I hope is that I will write a few poems that lodge in people’s memory. That is the highest aspiration of a poet. Some of the prose I’ve written, some of the essays I’ve written, I know in a sense it changed at least American and some European countries’ sense of what the role of literature is . . . the role of poetry is in society. But you know prose, I think – especially critical prose, non-fiction prose – is by its nature almost always ________. You know you change the conversation for a moment if the essay is still read 10, 15 years later. And I’ve been lucky to have essays that are still read 10, 15 years later. I mean that’s the most you can hope for.

Recorded On: 7/6/07