Ciardi, John

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John Ciardi (chēär´dē), 1916–86, American poet, b. Boston, grad. Tufts College, B.A., 1938, Univ. of Michigan, M.A., 1939. His poetry, noted for its wit and perception, includes Homeward to America (1940), Live Another Day (1949), In the Stoneworks (1961), and For Instance (1979). He also wrote How Does A Poem Mean? (1960); verse translations of Dante's Inferno (1954) and Purgatorio (1970); and Dialogue With an Audience (1963), reprints of his pieces for The Saturday Review, with readers' replies. His love of word origins led to two collections, A Browser's Dictionary (1980) and A Second Browser's Dictionary (1983).

See study by V. Clemente (1987).

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