Disappearing Ink

Gioia, the celebrated poet, critic, and author of Can Poetry Matter, here offers another bold and insightful collection of essays on literature's changing place in contemporary thought, art, and life.

The essays in Disappearing Ink stake the claim for poetry's place amid American popular culture, where poetry in its latest oral forms—rap, slam, spoken word, performance art—is transforming the traditional literary culture of the printed page. But, as this book's seminal title essay asks, "What is a conscientious critic supposed to do with an Eminem or Jay-Z?" In a brilliant array of writings that test the pulse of traditional and contemporary poetry, Gioia ponders the future of the written word and how it might find its most relevant incarnation, both today and tomorrow.

With the clarity, wit, and feisty intelligence that made Can Poetry Matter? one of the most important and controversial recent books on literature and American society, Gioia again demonstrates his unique abilities of observation and uncanny prognostication. This careful examination of our complicated yet daily relationship to art will be must-reading for all students and scholars of poetry or literature.