Dana Gioia Imagery

Author Dana Gioia uses many forms of imagery in his poems. We will analyze a few of his published poems to show them throughout this essay. The first one Money, then Insomnia, as well as Unsaid. These three poems are similar yet so different. Some background information about Gioia includes he is from California, and comes from an Italian and Mexican family. He was also the first person from his family to go to college. A couple of Gioia’s accomplishments are; he is an internationally acclaimed and award winning poet, at one time he was the Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, and he attended Stanford University as well as Harvard. After reading some background information on Gioia I think that because of his background this is

why he wrote some of the poems the way he did. He, being the first in his family to attend college, some would conclude that he did not come from money and this would be a hardship on his life growing up.

After graduating college, he became a CEO of a company where he began to have money, so he knows what it is like on both sides. Some of his poems are very closely related in the meaning and the imagery used.
To begin, the poem titled Money illustrates that money is something negative and bad, that people put so high on their lists they tend to forget what really matters. Gioia uses sarcasm, and humor, throughout this poem. Money is something everyone needs in order to live, but money also changes people. Some of us have more money than others, some spend money when they shouldn’t, and some have only money. This poem starts out from the very first line describing money, “Money, the long green,” paper money is exactly that a piece of green paper that is cut into a long rectangle. The next two lines of this poem are again describing money using slang words for money. The speaker has great use of imagery in this poem that everyone who reads this first stanza of the poem already has an image painted for him/her of exactly what the speaker wants you to have. A picture of money. There are so many slang words for money due to the fact that everyone has a need and a

want to have money. Continue reading this poem and the images get more real and vivid because everyone no matter if you are rich, poor, or somewhere in the middle, can relate to it. Lines 4-6 uses figurative language describing having to pay for something or buying something with money. At some point in life people have heard or said a phrase such as “fork it over” or “watch it burn holes through pockets”.

By Gioia using these terms he continues to use imagery and illustrate money. People have to pay bills so by using the term “fork it over” you do not picture handing a fork to someone you picture something like having to give someone else your money. In the third stanza of this poem Gioia is describing “rich” money. “Greenbacks” are simply the green bills, “double eagles” are expensive gold coins, coins that the average person would not have to spend. We can tell he is talking about rich people by the first line in this stanza “To be made of it!” the imagery is someone with a lot of money, not the literal term. Many times children hear a similar term “I am not made of money”, it paints the illusion that if your made of money you have a lot of money. In the fourth stanza Gioia is using metaphors by comparing things to money. “Holds heads above water” money will keep you afloat if you have enough of it to pay your bills and pay for the necessities of life, but if you do not have enough money you will sink. You can make ends meet if you have money “makes both ends meet”. The thirteenth line “Money breeds money” means if you are smart with your money you will always have

money. If you come from a wealthy family, chances are you will also be wealthy. The next two lines in the fifth stanza speak about putting your money into savings and leaving it alone so it will accumulate interest which gives you more money in the long run. The last stanza in this poem I think is very powerful. “Money. You don’t know where it’s been” this is a literal part of speech. No one ever knows where that money in your pocket came from, yes, you may have earned it from working but literally those bills could have been anywhere before they reached your pocket. “But you put it where your mouth is”, money is dirty, no one wants to put money in or around their mouth. Money is probably the dirtiest thing people have. So, again this is a figure of speech not to take literal, kind of like the term “put your money where your mouth is” this phrase is often said when people make bets or when someone has something to prove. “And it talks.” Money equals power. People with money have the power to keep their heads above water, they have the power to buy things, they have the power to put money in accounts to earn interest and essentially make more money. But, if you have only money, you really don’t have anything.
The poem Insomnia also uses great imagery, figurative language, and some metaphors and similes. With this poem the use of imagery makes you feel that you are inside the house, and the house is speaking. This poem puts you in a dark place which is different from the first. Insomnia starts out as what someone with insomnia might be experiencing when they cannot fall asleep. The very first line “Now you hear what the house has to say.” personifies the house, Gioia gives the house its own voice. The first 6 lines in this poem set the tone for the rest of the poem. Gioia is describing the average noises someone might hear in their own home while they lay awake at night. The way in which Gioia writes lines 2 and 3 are adding to the character of the house. In lines 4-6 you realize the person in this house does not have a family and maybe whishing he had one, “of small complaints like the sounds of a family” it is also showing the owner of the house has issues with recognizing the things that are important in life “that year by year you’ve learned how to ignore.” In the second stanza the person is realizing that everything he has worked for to buy with money are falling apart, “the murmur of property, of things in disrepair,” and “the moving parts about to come undone,”. The last line in this stanza reads “the faces you could not bring yourself to love.” Is the most powerful in the poem after reading this line a sort of sadness comes over you and you think to yourself, the person this house is representing is sad and lonely because for all those years he/she worked so hard to buy material things that only provided short term happiness and now that everything is falling apart the happiness is gone and he/she has nothing left. He/she chose possessions over family and friends. This poem is eighteen lines long and only the last 4 lines of the poem having rhyming in them. I think this is because Gioia is emphasizing how lonely this person is. The line “numbering the minutes no one will mark,” is reminding us all, time with the ones we love is more important than all of our materialistic things. Loved ones will provide longer happiness then material objects.
The last poem by Dana Gioia we will discuss in this essay is Unsaid. This is a very short poem, of only 6 lines, but very true and relatable. Again, Gioia uses imagery and metaphors in this poem. Line 1 “So much of what we live goes on inside” you start to get a mental picture of the life you have been living up to this point, the word “inside” is not meaning things such as and inside of a building more of inside yourself, inside your mind. Line 3 reads “Of unacknowledged love is no less real” meaning pain is just as painful as the unacknowledged love. “For having passes unsaid. What we conceal.” , “Is always more then what we confide” means we as humans feel much safer when we hide our feelings instead of showing and telling our true feelings. This poem is short and sweet. It starts the reader out thinking about their life and as we can relate to this poem. When we are younger we do not hide our feelings we show them, we cry when we are sad or hurt, and we laugh when something is funny. As we age we start to hide our true feelings when we get hurt we “walk it of” when we are sad, we are sad to ourselves, we keep it inside. And by the time you are an adult and you start to experience death of loved ones, you begin to realize time is short and opportunities you once had to share with that person, no longer exists. You start to live a life of regret.
In conclusion, the three poems relate to each other because they all have similar out comes. Be smart in your life, be smart with the money you have be smart with the time you have and cherish the people you have. Dana Gioia writes all three of these poems almost as giving advice to the readers. The advice I was able to get from this is in the first poem Money the last stanza reads;
Money. You don’t know where it’s been,
But you put it where your mouth is.
And it talks.
This is the advice from Gioia, keep the money out of your mouth, and money does talk. The author believes that you should be careful with your money because money can buy material things, but it cannot buy you happiness and time. In the poem Insomnia many of the things described in this poem are representing the person broken life. The person has an unhappy life because like in the first poem the person has money and has spent it all on material things instead of on meaningful things such as spending time with loved ones. In both of these poems money is and can be evil if not handled reasonably. The last poem has more to do with death then money or materials however, it still relates to the imagery and meanings of the first two poems. In this last poem Unsaid, Gioia still gave advice to the reader, spend time with the people who matter in your life because one day they may not be here and you will live with regrets in your life. Money comes and goes, material items stop working and break, and things left unsaid result in regrets.