He may have been called "the John Ashcroft of poetry" by Black Sparrow Press founder John Martin, and Lawrence Ferlinghetti did say he was an 'excellent choice' for the "National Endowment for the Arts of Complacency."

But he's not all bad. In fact, he sounds like a very interesting person, aside from his politics, so if you still haven't Googled him, I encourage you to do so. Check out this SF Chronicle article that was published on him when he was appointed by Bush to head the NEA (appropriately entitled, "Who is Dana Gioia?"). It made me feel a lot better about the choice for Commencement Speaker. There's also his semi-famous essay, "Can Poetry Matter?" published in the Atlantic Monthly, and some of his poetry. I thought this one was nice:

Rough Country

Give me a landscape made of obstacles,
of steep hills and jutting glacial rock,
where the low-running streams are quick to flood
the grassy fields and bottomlands.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A place
no engineers can master–where the roads
must twist like tendrils up the mountainside
on narrow cliffs where boulders block the way.
Where tall black trunks of lightning-scalded pine
push through the tangled woods to make a roost
for hawks and swarming crows.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . And sharp inclines
where twisting through the thorn-thick underbrush,
scratched and exhausted, one turns suddenly
to find an unexpected waterfall,
not half a mile from the nearest road,
a spot so hard to reach that no one comes–
a hiding place, a shrine for dragonflies
and nesting jays, a sign that there is still
one piece of property that won't be owned.