Dana Gioia's transcultural ecopoetics: The Latin legacy of a California poet

Abstract

This article discusses Dana Gioia's poetics of place in its intersections with the author's multiple diasporic legacies (Italian, Mexican, mestizo), which he often refers to as ‘Latin’. It explores the forms of cultural poiesis that has been fashioned by the Californian environments of diaspora and the role played by nature and the environment in the linguistic and literary dialogue resulting from the cultural transitions between America (both the USA and Mexico) and Italy. Gioia's ecopoesis is read as an aspect of the poet's ongoing engagement with public culture and commitment to preventing the decline of poetry's cultural importance. It restates his effort to reconnect poetry with the everyday lives of a wider and diverse reading public, stressing the importance of getting to know one's own specific locale more deeply. Gioia's environmentally oriented poems can thus be comprised within ‘a new third wave of ecocriticism, which recognizes ethnic and national particularities and yet transcends ethnic and national boundaries’ (Adamson and Slovic). Their transcultural vision crosses the frontiers separating the different cultures synthesized by the author's Latin self-identification and represents a crucial space for negotiation and imaginative creation tapping into the language of poetry to find ways to actively address our urgent environmental crises.