May is a month for poetry! Before it ends, the AEI cultural series will hold its fifth event. Last year Jody Bottum read from his book The Fall & Other Poems. Now Dana Gioia, chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, will talk about the role of poetry in America, the subject of his book Can Poetry Matter?, and read from his third full-length collection of poems, Interrogations at Noon, winner of the 2002 American Book Award.

Dana Gioia is a poet, literary critic, educator, and former business executive. A native Californian of Italian and Mexican descent, he was the first member of his family to attend college. His anthology Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry and Drama, coedited with X. J. Kennedy, is a best-selling college literature textbook. An influential critic, Dana Gioia has been a long-time commentator on American culture and literature for BBC Radio. His poems, translations, essays, and reviews have appeared in the New Yorker, the Atlantic, the Washington Post Book World, the New York Times Book Review, Slate, the Hudson Review, and other publications. His work, including a full-length dance theater piece titled Counting the Children, has been set to music by composers in genres ranging from classical to rock.