John Ciardi

John Ciardi , 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).

Bibliography: See study by V. Clemente (1987).

Ciardi, John (1916–85), born in Boston, educated at Bates and Tufts, taught English at Harvard and Rutgers, and was poetry editor (1956–72) of The Saturday Review. His own poetry, often marked by vernacular diction and homely wit, includes Homeward to America (1940); Other Skies (1947); Live Another Day (1949); From Time to Time (1951); As If, Poems New and Selected (1955); I Marry You (1958), love poems; In Fact (1963); and Lives of X (1971), about his youth. He also wrote verse, often humorous or nonsensical, for children. He translated Dante's Inferno (1954). Dialogue with an Audience (1963) and Fast and Slow (1975) are collections of essays.