Disappearing Ink: Poetry at the End of Print Culture

Poetry is an art that preceded writing, and it will survive television and video games . . . The problem won't be finding an audience. The challenge will be writing well enough to deserve one.

In Disappearing Ink, Dana Gioia stakes the claim for poetry's place amid American popular culture, where poetry in its latest oral forms -rap, slam, performance-is transforming the traditional literary culture of the printed page. But, as the seminal title essay asks, "What is a conscientious critic supposed to do with an Eminem or Jay-Z?" In a brilliant array of essays 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.

With the clarity, wit, and feisty intelligence that made Can Poetry Matter? one of the most important and controversial books about literature and contemporary American society, Gioia again demonstrates his unique abilities of observation and uncanny prognostication to examine our complicated everyday relationship to art.