Why culture, art and poetry matter

Dana Gioia

By Jenna DeWitt
Arts and Entertainment editor

Artists, intellectuals and other academics have failed the nation, Dana Gioia, speaker for the Beall-Russell Lecture in the Humanities, said Monday afternoon in a discussion titled "Why Culture Matters." "They have lost track of their audience and have become too focused on the academic community," he said.

Gioia is a poet, author, critic and former chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts as well as the current director of the arts and culture programs for the Aspen Institute.

At a luncheon prior to the lecture, he explained why he is concerned that culture and art, specifically poetry, matters.

"We have a tremendous amount of creativity, but we have lost the audience," he said. "We commercialized arts and entertainment."

Gioia said product placement has taken over the media and other forms of entertainment.

"I think that we have a culture in which the temporary, the disposable, the mildly provocative crowds out the truly noteworthy," he said.

One area of art that particularly concerns Gioia is theater. From the form's roots in Athens, theater has been "the foundational civic art," he said.

"Arts participation in the U.S. has gone down. Less than 10 percent of Americans attend any type of play a year," he said.

Gioia spoke of the ability of plays to have a "cathartic effect" on their diverse audience, an audience that might be experiencing the community tensions reflected in the play's action.

One part of American culture Gioia spoke of specifically was an increasing number of television shows that display "usually quite poor, uneducated people behaving badly."

"The pleasure we get is one of smug superiority over others," he said.

"I think that it is morally damaging. It is no better ... than socially acceptable pornography. This society seems to be robbing the poor of its dignity, turning them into clowns."

He encouraged the audience to turn its attention elsewhere.

Gioia commented on the disappearance of arts from the education system, particularly in universities.

Like sports, he said, the arts are vital to the experiences of well-rounded students.

"Our society feels sports have value. If you put sports in schools, kids learn things that are really important to them that they are unlikely to learn in other ways," he said.

"Now interestingly, they don't say this about the arts."

Gioia said this is mainly due to the focus of arts educators on ideology instead of practice.

Dr. Laurel Zeiss, assistant professor in the School of Music, said she would add that music can be used to benefit students as well.

"I think a lot of the things he said about sports in schools apply to music too," she said.

"You have to work as a team, be disciplined, be able to fail and develop fine motor skills. But, unlike sports, you can do music the rest of your life."

Zeiss said she aims to make her music history and culture classes applicable to her students' lives.

"I'm using the arts to show that the past is relevant to our culture," she said.

"Other cultures emphasize music as a process and as a community. I try to bring out those things."

Students also expressed the importance of the arts in their lives. Waco doctoral candidate Jeff Bilbro said he writes poetry in his spare time in addition to his work in the English department.

Bilbro said he has studied Gioia's poetry and criticism.

He agrees with Gioia when he says that poets should practice both formal poetry and free verse.

"He's right that you have to use all tools," Bilbro said. "Poetry should arrest the reader."

Gioia has had success as both a poet and critic.

As a poet, Gioia he won a National Book Award for "Interrogations at Noon." As a critic, he has received national attention for his essay-turned-book, "Can Poetry Matter?"

The Beall-Russell Lecture series, held in the Cashion Building, is known for bringing the all-stars of the humanities to Baylor.

Past lecturers have included Maya Angelou, Bill Moyers and Alexander McCall Smith.

The lectures were established in 1982 by Virginia Beall Ball to honor her mother, DeLouise McClelland Beall, and Lily Russell, former dean of women at Baylor.

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