Bruce Bawer (Connoisseur, March 1989) notes that Dana Gioia

is ... one of several younger poets--dubbed "The New Formalists"--who are challenging the poetry-world status quo in significant, possibly even historic, ways. Some of his more vociferous critics would have one believe that he is out to eradicate free verse, repeal the modernist revolution, and inaugurate an era of philistine poetics. It is more nearly correct to say that, unlike many younger poets these days, Gioia includes [traditional] form among his options and is capable of using it very effectively.

Michael Dana Gioia was born in Hawthorne, California, a working-class suburb of Los Angeles, on 24 December 1950. He was the first of the four surviving children of Michael Gioia, a cabdriver and shoe-store owner, and Dorothy Ortiz Gioia, a telephone operator. Dana's mother, of Mexican descent, was born in Hawthorne. His father had moved to Los Angeles from Detroit with his...