Gioia has published six full-length volumes of poetry in addition to many smaller fine-press books and pamphlets. Although Gioia is best known for helping revive rhyme and meter, all of his books contain a mix of poems in free and formal verse. His first collection,
Daily Horoscope (1986), attracted much notice, favorable and unfavorably, because of its use of rhyme, meter and verse narrative, but its most widely reprinted poem, “California Hills in August,” is in free verse.
The Gods of Winter (1991), Gioia’s second collection, contains poems written after the death of his first son. Published in the U.S. and U.K, the British edition was chosen by the Poetry Book Society as their main selection. Gioia’s third collection,
Interrogations at Noon (2001), was the winner of the 2002
American Book Award. The book contains both original poems and translations.
Pity the Beautiful (2012) marked Gioia’s return to poetry after his time and the NEA and included two chilling poems, “Special Treatments Ward,” which describes a terminal ward in a children’s hospital, and “Haunted,” a dramatic monologue in equal parts of a love story and a ghost story. “Haunted” was turned into a ballet-opera by composer Paul Salerni. Gioia’s next volume,
99 Poems: New & Selected (2016), surveys his career in an unusual way. Rather than present his poems chronologically, Gioia arranges them by seven themes. The book won the
Poets’ Prize. Gioia's most recent collection of poems is
Meet Me at the Lighthouse, published in 2023. It pays special attention to his Mexican roots and includes “The Ballad of Jesus Ortiz,” which recounts the life and death of this great-grandfather, a vaquero who was killed in a racially motivated incident.
Criticism and beliefs about poetry In a 2016 interview, Gioia recalled, "As soon as I began publishing formal poems, my work was attacked." In response, he decided, "to articulate my poetics", by publishing literary essays. In his 1987
essay Notes on the New Formalism, Gioia wrote: "There will always be groups advocating new types of poetry, some of it genuine, just as there will always be conservative opposing forces trying to maintain the conventional methods. But the revival of rhyme and meter among some young poets creates an unprecedented situation in
American poetry. The New Formalists put the free-verse poets in the ironic and unprepared position of being the
status quo. Free verse, the creation of an older literary revolution, is now the long-established, ruling
orthodoxy, formal poetry the unexpected challenge... Obviously, for many writers the discussion between formal and free-verse has become an encoded political debate." In a 2016 interview with
John Cusatis, however, Gioia explained, "
Literary movements are always temporary. They last a decade or so, and then they die or merge into the mainstream. The best New Formalist poets gradually became mainstream figures. There was no climax to the so-called Poetry Wars, only slow assimilation and change. Free and formal verse gradually ceased to be considered polar opposites. Form became one of the available styles of contemporary practice." In 1991, Gioia published the essay,
Can Poetry Matter? in the April issue of
Atlantic Monthly. In the essay, Gioia began with the words, "
American poetry now belongs to a
subculture. No longer part of the mainstream of artistic and intellectual life, it has become the specialized occupation of a relatively small and isolated group. Little of the frenetic activity it generates ever reaches outside that closed group. As a class, poets are not without cultural status. Like
priests in a town of
agnostics, they still command a certain residual prestige. But as individual artists, they are almost invisible." Gioia argued that
American poetry had become imprisoned in college and university creative writing programs and as a result, was no longer being read or studied by the vast majority of the
American people. Gioia concluded with the words, "It is time to experiment, time to leave the well-ordered but stuffy classroom, time to restore a vulgar vitality to poetry and unleash the energy now trapped in the
subculture. There is nothing to lose. Society has already told us that poetry is dead. Let's build a
funeral pyre out of the desiccated conventions piled around us and watch the unkillable
Phoenix rise from the ashes." Writing in 2002, Gioia recalled, "When the original essay appeared in the April 1991 issue of
Atlantic Monthly, the editors warned me to expect angry letters from interested parties. When the
hate mail arrived typed on the letterheads of University writing programs, no one was surprised. What astonished the
Atlantic editors, however, was the sheer size and intensity of the response.
Can Poetry Matter? eventually generated more mail than any article the
Atlantic had published in decades."
Music and opera Gioia has written five opera libretti. His first opera,
Nosferatu, with music by Alva Henderson, was jointly premiered by Rimrock Opera and Opera Idaho in 2004. His second libretto, ''Tony Caruso's Final Broadcast
, with music by Paul Salerni, won the National Opera Association award for best new chamber opera and was premiered in Los Angeles in 2008. Both of these works have been recorded. His opera, The Three Feathers
, with music by Lori Laitman, was premiered by Virginia Tech and Opera Roanoke in 2014. His one-act opera for children, Maya and the Magic Ring'', was produced by the Lyric Opera of Kansas City in 2025. == Honors and awards ==