Gioia has also argued in favor of a return to the past tradition of poetry translators replicating the rhythm and verse structure of the original poem.

Gioia helped renew the popularity of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and the rediscovery of Weldon Kees and John Allan Wyeth.

At the request of U.S. President George W. Bush, Gioia served between 2003 and 2009 as the chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA).

[1] Five years after Gioia left office, The Washington Post referred to him as one of "two of the NEA's strongest leaders".

His poetry has been translated into French, German, Italian, Spanish, Russian, Romanian, Bulgarian, Chinese, and Arabic.

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.

Free verse, the creation of an older literary revolution, is now the long-established, ruling orthodoxy, formal poetry the unexpected challenge... Form, we are told authoritatively, is artificial, elitist, retrogressive, right-wing, and (my favorite) Un-American.

None of these arguments can withstand critical scrutiny, but nevertheless, they continue to be made so regularly that one can only assume that they provide some emotional comfort to their advocates.

No longer part of the mainstream of artistic and intellectual life, it has become the specialized occupation of a relatively small and isolated group.

As a result, recent poetry was no longer being read or studied by the vast majority of the American people.

Let's build a funeral pyre out of the desiccated conventions piled around us and watch the unkillable Phoenix rise from the ashes.

"[11] 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.

[12]" In 1992, Gioia resigned from his position as a vice president at General Foods to pursue a full-time career as a poet.

This influential conference has been repeated at two-year intervals at Fordham, Loyola Chicago, and University of Dallas.

Gioia served as chairman from 2003 to 2009, and worked to bring new visibility to the agency through a series of national initiatives that stressed broad democratic reach and artistic excellence.

"We have a generation of Americans growing up who have never been to the theater, the symphony, opera, dance, who have never heard fine jazz, and who increasingly don't read," said Gioia,[14] in justifying his efforts to bring large scale national initiatives of artistic excellence to millions of Americans.

[citation needed] Gioia's term as NEA Chairman coincided with the peak of U.S. involvement in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

[20][21] Five years after Gioia left office, The Washington Post referred to him as one of "two of the NEA's strongest leaders".

He has been a visiting professor for a single term at Johns Hopkins, Sarah Lawrence, Wesleyan, Mercer University, and Colorado College.

For nine years he taught literature and music at the University of Southern California as the Judge Widney Professor of Poetry and Public Culture.

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.

This volume demonstrated Gioia’s interest in narrative poetry with two long dramatic monologues, “Counting the Children” in which an accountant has a disturbing interaction with a dead woman’s grotesque doll collection, and “The Homecoming,” which is spoken by an escaped returning home to commit one final murder.

This diverse book, which contains both original poems and translations, was followed by a decade of silence during Gioia’s service at the National Endowment for the Arts and the Aspen Institute.

Pity the Beautiful (2012) marked Gioia’s return to poetry 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.

Gioia’s most recent volume, Meet Me at the Lighthouse (2023), paid special attention to his Mexican roots and included “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.

[25] Gioia has collaborated with musicians including James MacMillan, Ned Rorem, Lori Laitman, Morten Lauridsen, Paul Salerni, Alva Henderson, David Conte, Tom Cipullo, Stefania de Kenessey, and John Harbison.