Dana Gioia: Poet, Shaman, Opera Lover

And: Lonely Kierkegaard; Paying Attention; Weeping Guitars

Gioia, from his talk on art, beauty, and spirituality

Take a look at this essay by Dana Gioia, formerly the head of the National Endowment for the Arts, writing about growing up in a working-class Italian community in the 1950s, and discovering that he was an opera lover. It begins like this:

There was something shameful about loving opera. Especially for…