In the title poem of his latest collection, “Meet Me at the Lighthouse,” Dana Gioia (b. 1950) turns his deep feeling for Los Angeles, the city of his birth, to a memento mori — a contemplation of the death of himself and his old friends. Readers of the Sun will recall Mr. Gioia’s “Psalm to Our Lady Queen of the Angels,” appearing last May, which poses a lament for a beloved city: a city that appears, in that poem, as an American Jerusalem in desolation. In today’s Poem of the Day, the Los Angeles scene becomes a meeting in the underworld of an equally beloved jazz club. As it happens, the club remains open to this day, but the setting Mr. Gioia envisions is located firmly in “the summer of ‘71, / When all of our friends were young and immortal.”  

When Mr. Gioia reads the poem aloud, he emphasizes his love and affinity for the West Coast jazz that, in their youth, he and these departed friends had thronged to hear at the Lighthouse and other clubs. Author of opera libretti and of art-song cycles, Mr. Gioia has also collaborated with jazz musicians, notably the pianist and composer Helen Sung, to set many of these Los Angeles poems as songs. In “Meet Me at the Lighthouse,” whose loosely metered lines seem to float on the air like jazz riffs, the living speaker mixes with dead friends, aware all the while that he too will soon go home to that “dim subdivision,” where the good doctor at the gate enforces the dawn curfew. Soon enough, death will have closed out everyone’s tab.  

Meet Me at the Lighthouse
by Dana Gioia

Meet me at the Lighthouse in Hermosa Beach,
That shabby nightclub on its foggy pier.
Let’s aim for the summer of ’71,
When all our friends were young and immortal.

I’ll pick up the cover charge, find us a table,
And order a round of their watery drinks.
Let’s savor the smoke of that sinister century,
Perfume of tobacco in the tangy salt air.

The crowd will be quiet — only ghosts at the bar —
So you, old friend, won’t feel out of place.
You need a night out from that dim subdivision.
Tell Dr. Death you’ll be back before dawn.

The club has booked the best talent in Tartarus.
Gerry, Cannonball, Hampton, and Stan,
With Chet and Art, those gorgeous greenhorns —
The swinging-masters of our West Coast soul.

Let the All-Stars shine from that jerry-built stage.
Let their high notes shimmer above the cold waves.
Time and the tide are counting the beats.
Death the collector is keeping the tab.

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With “Poem of the Day,” The New York Sun offers a daily portion of verse selected by Joseph Bottum with the help of the North Carolina poet Sally Thomas, the Sun’s associate poetry editor. Tied to the day, or the season, or just individual taste, the poems will be typically drawn from the lesser-known portion of the history of English verse. In the coming months we will be reaching out to contemporary poets for examples of current, primarily formalist work, to show that poetry can still serve as a delight to the ear, an instruction to the mind, and a tonic for the soul.