Michael Dana Gioia (born December 24, 1950) is an American poet and writer. Gioia also served as the Chairman of the federal arts agency the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA). He spent the first fifteen years of his career writing at night while working for General Foods Corporation. After his 1991 essay "Can Poetry Matter?" in the The Atlantic generated international attention, Gioia quit business to pursue writing full-time. Gioia has published four books of poetry and three volumes of literary criticism as well as opera libretti, song cycles, translations, and over two dozen literary anthologies. Gioia is the Judge Widney Professor of Poetry and Public Culture at the University of Southern California where he now teaches. In December 2015 he became the California State Poet Laureate. He currently divides his time between Los Angeles and Sonoma County, California.