'The Coat' by Dana Gioia

Much of Dana Gioia's poetry might be set in the contemporary world, but a host of ancient, mythic references echo in the speakers' voices and the scenes they present to readers. In "Pity The Beautiful: Poems" (Graywolf: 75 pp., $15 paper), a new collection by the former chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts (and now a professor of poetry at the University of Southern California), Gioia sounds an elegiac note as he considers lost loved ones, growing older and the daily frustrations that cause us to yearn for something more transcendent. The poem "The Coat" evokes a memory that the speaker pursues — even though he knows he will never find a suitable answer to his questions.

May 6, 2012