Poem of the Day: ‘Psalm to Our Lady Queen of the Angels’

To conclude its week of work from living poets, the “Poem of the Day” feature of The New York Sun turns to Dana Gioia — as distinguished a poet as America can boast. The former chair of the National Endowment for the Arts, he is the author of five books of poetry, several books of literary criticism, and many opera libretti, song cycles, and translations. A key figure in the New Formalism movement of the 1990s, Mr. Gioia is as responsible as anyone for the return of verse in traditional meter and rhyme, reestablishing formal poetry as a respectable way of doing contemporary poetry, mostly (but not entirely) freed from the strange political anger that had once labeled formalism as fascist, racist, and imperialist. In his new “Psalm to Our Lady Queen of the Angels” Mr. Gioia looks again to his native California in quatrains of irregular meter to bemoan the condition of Los Angeles. The city would better understand its poor and its history if it remembered that the original name and dedication of Los Angeles were not for the angels, but for their queen, the Blessed Virgin Mary: “Pray for the angels kept from their queen.”