Prayer

First published in 1990 in the magazine The New Criterion, Dana Gioia’s “Prayer” is a 16-line poem contemplating the workings of the Divine during a period of grief. Although the poem is not entirely autobiographical, the poet wrote it in response to the 1987 death of his four-month-old child from sudden infant death syndrome. Unlike many of Gioia’s poems, it is lyric rather than narrative and employs no rhyme or consistent meter.

“Prayer” begins The Gods of Winter, Gioia’s second collection (1991), which was dedicated to his deceased son. Besides his work as a poet of Italian Mexican heritage, Gioia is primarily known as an essayist and a former marketing executive for General Foods. He has been lauded as an advocate in his roles as chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts (2003-2008) and poet laureate of California (2015-2018). “Prayer” is one of his most well-known and anthologized poems and has been set to music by choral composer Morten Lauridsen (2011).

Poet Biography

Michael Dana Gioia was born in Hawthorne, California, on December 24, 1950, to parents Michael Gioia and Dorothy Ortiz. Gioia is of Italian Mexican descent and was raised in a Catholic household with two younger siblings. When he was six, one of his uncles died, leaving the family a vast collection of books and records; this collection had a formative impact on Gioia’s childhood, immersing him in the arts.

Gioia attended parochial schools, receiving a classical education, and he was the first person in his family to attend college. While he enrolled in California’s Stanford University in 1969 to study musical composition, he discovered his love of poetry during a study-abroad program in Vienna. After graduating from Stanford, Gioia went to Harvard in 1974 where he studied with Elizabeth Bishop, Northrop Frye, and Robert Fitzgerald, who shaped his literary ambitions and writing craft.

After receiving his degree in Comparative Literature in 1975, Gioia returned to California and Stanford to get a Master of Business Administration, which he received in 1977. He then worked at General Foods in marketing and eventually became vice president of that division. In 1980, he married Mary Elizabeth Hiecke.

A successful businessman, Gioia did much of his writing in the evening and on weekends. He gained notice as his poems were published in Poetry magazine and The New Yorker. His first collection, Daily Horoscope, appeared in 1986 to excellent reviews. Gioia was also part of an academic and artistic debate regarding the merits of writing free-verse and confessional poetry versus more formalist poetry involving rhyme and meter. Gioia has been an advocate of the latter camp but has written significantly in both styles.

In 1987, his son Michael Jasper was born. However, four months later, the baby died of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS). Several of Gioia’s poems about this loss, including “Prayer,” appeared in his next collection, The Gods of Winter (1991). He and his wife went on to have two more sons.

During this time, he also wrote his essay “Can Poetry Matter?” for the Atlantic (1991), in which he suggested that poetry was largely kept to the realm of colleges and universities. He urged poets to write outside their academic boundaries. The essay was widely read and solidified Gioia’s literary career. In 1992, Gioia quit his job at General Foods to write full time. Along with Michael Peich, he co-founded the annual West Chester University Poetry Conference in 1995, which concentrated on the traditional craft of writing in form and meter.

Gioia won the 2002 American Book Award for Interrogations at Noon. The following year, he was asked to serve as the chairman for the National Endowment of the Arts (NEA) by President George W. Bush. Gioia held this position from 2003-2008. He has also developed several notable programs to help bring art to millions of Americans. They include The Big Read, which encourages communities to read the same book; Poetry Out Loud, a national poetry recitation contest for students); and Shakespeare in American Communities, which gave grants for touring theater productions. Gioia stepped down from the NEA in January 2009.

In 2012, Gioia produced the poetry collection Pity the Beautiful and, in 2015, became the California State Poet Laureate. The next year, he released 99 Poems, a collection of new and selected poems. As of 2022, Gioia has written or co-written over two dozen literary anthologies and college textbooks, as well as essays and reviews, and three opera libretti. He has also translated poetry and edited several anthologies. Gioia currently holds the position of the Judge Widney Professor of Poetry and Public Culture and the University of Southern California.

Poem Text

Gioia, Dana. “Prayer.” 1990. Poetry Foundation.

Summary

A lyric poem in six stanzas, “Prayer” both contemplates and directly addresses the Divine, which is also Death. In the first stanza, the speaker observes sounds that indicate a passage of time and create an eerie atmosphere: a “clocktower” (Line 1), a “footstep” (Line 2), and the “wind” (3). In the second stanza, the speaker compares the Divine to a “jeweller” (Line 4) and “connoisseur of autumn’s opulence” (Line 4) and lovely things in the natural world. The third stanza concentrates on what the Divine does physically: It is the “[k]eeper” (Line 7) and “choreographer” (Line 7) of life events. In the fourth stanza, the speaker acknowledges that eventually they, too, will meet the Divine, or Death. However, the speaker reveals that this is not why they are addressing the entity; instead, they “pray” (Line 14) for the Divine to “watch over” (Line 14) a “him” (Line 14) who is no more. The speaker feels the deceased loved one is as precious as the valuable mineral within a “mountain” (Line 15) and should be secured as such. The speaker also hopes the Divine will protect this person as a “harsh falcon” (Line 16) might protect its “flightless young” (Line 16) until the speaker can join “him” (Line 14) in the afterlife.