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Home » John Ciardi

John Ciardi

Biography John Ciardi

John Ciardi, in full John Anthony Ciardi, (born June 24, 1916, Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.—died March 30, 1986, Edison, New Jersey), was an American poet, translator, and etymologist. While primarily known as a poet, he also translated Dante's Divine Comedy, wrote several volumes of children's poetry, pursued etymology, contributed to the Saturday Review as a columnist and long-time poetry editor, and directed the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference in Vermont.

Ciardi not only wrote 21 books of poetry but achieved the distinction of having earned more than one million dollars-not all from poetry!

Ciardi was educated at Bates College (Lewiston, Maine), Tufts University (A.B., 1938), and the University of Michigan (M.A., 1939). He served as an aerial gunner in the U.S. Army Air Corps (1942–45) and then taught at universities until 1961. Thereafter he devoted himself full-time to literary pursuits. Ciardi served as poetry editor of the Saturday Review from 1956 to 1972. He felt that interaction between audience and author was crucial, and he generated continuous controversy with his critical reviews. He was a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Institute of Arts and Letters.

John Ciardi's first book of poems, Homeward to America (1940) was followed by war poems titled Other Skies (1947). His entire corpus, Collected Poems edited by his biographer, Edward Cifelli, was published in 1997. A long useful critical work, How Does a Poem Mean?, was issued in 1959. With Isaac Asimov he wrote Limericks. He not only translated Dante's Divine Comedy but wrote The Monster Den, humorous verse inspired by his family, as well as other fun books for children.

After years of teaching English-at Harvard (1946-1953) and Rutgers (1953-1961)-Ciardi resigned his tenured faculty position for an independent career. He served as a highly popular poetry editor of the Saturday Review from 1956 to 1972. His occasional public television broadcasts were supplemented by his weekly National Public Radio series begun in 1980 as "A Word in Your Ear."

A National Teachers Award for Excellence in Poetry for Children was presented in 1982. He died of a heart attack on Easter Sunday 1986.

Awards

"In 1956, Ciardi received the Prix de Rome from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In 1982, the National Council of Teachers of English awarded him its award for excellence in children's poetry." He also won American Platform Association's Carl Sandburg Award in 1980.

Bibliography

  • Homeward to America, 1940. Poems.
  • Other Skies, 1947. Poems.
  • Live Another Day, 1949. Poems.
  • Mid-Century American Poems, 1950. Anthology edited by Ciardi.
  • From Time to Time, 1951. Poems.
  • "The Hypnoglyph", 1953. Short story in Fantasy & Science Fiction, using the pseudonym "John Anthony."
  • The Inferno. 1954. Translation.
  • As If: Poems New and Selected, 1955.
  • I Marry You, 1958. Poems.
  • 39 Poems, 1959.
  • The Reason for the Pelican, 1959. Children's poems.
  • How Does a Poem Mean?, 1959. Poetry textbook.
  • Scrappy the Pup, 1960. Children's poems.
  • In the Stoneworks, 1961. Poems.
  • The Purgatorio, 1961. Translation.
  • I Met a Man, 1961. Children's poems.
  • The Man Who Sang the Sillies, 1961. Children's poems.
  • In Fact, 1962. Poems.
  • The Wish-Tree, 1962. Children's story.
  • You Read to Me, I'll Read to You, 1962. Children's poems.
  • Dialogue with an Audience, 1963. Saturday Review controversies and other selected essays.
  • John J. Plenty and Fiddler Dan, 1963. Children's poems.
  • Person to Person, 1964. Poems.
  • You Know Who, 1964. Children's poems.
  • The King Who Saved Himself from Being Saved, 1966. Children's story in verse.
  • This Strangest Everything, 1966. Poems.
  • The Monster Den, 1966. Children's poems.
  • An Alphabestiary, 1967. Poems.
  • The Paradiso, 1970. Translation.
  • Someone Could Win a Polar Bear, 1970. Children's poems.
  • Lives of X, 1971. Verse autobiography.
  • Manner of Speaking, 1972. Saturday Review columns.
  • The Little That Is All, 1974. Poems.
  • Fast & Slow, 1975. Children's poems.
  • How Does a Poem Mean?, 1975. Revised second edition. With Miller Williams.
  • The Divine Comedy, 1977. All three sections published together.
  • Limericks: Too Gross or Two Dozen Dirty Dozen Stanzas, 1978. With Isaac Asimov.
  • For Instance, 1979. Poems.
  • A Browser's Dictionary, 1980. Etymology.
  • A Grossery of Limericks, 1981. With Isaac Asimov.
  • A Second Browser's Dictionary, 1983. Etymology.
  • Selected Poems, 1984.
  • The Birds of Pompeii, 1985. Poems.
  • Doodle Soup, 1985. Children's poems.
  • Good Words to You, 1987. Etymology.
  • Poems of Love and Marriage, 1988.
  • Saipan: The War Diary of John Ciardi, 1988.
  • Blabberhead, Bobble-Bud & Spade, 1988. Collection of children's poems.
  • Ciardi Himself: Fifteen Essays in the Reading, Writing, and Teaching of Poetry, 1989.
  • Echoes: Poems Left Behind, 1989.
  • The Hopeful Trout and Other Limericks, 1989. Children's poems.
  • Mummy Took Lessons and Other Poems, 1990. Children's poems.
  • Stations of the Air, 1993. Poems.
  • The Collected Poems of John Ciardi, 1997. Edited by Edward M. Cifelli.
  • Someone Could Win a Polar Bear

Why Nobody Pets the Lion at the Zoo

John Ciardi

Ward Three: Faith

John Ciardi

Vagary of the Simple Heart

John Ciardi

True or False

John Ciardi

A Trenta-Sei of the Pleasure We Take in the Early Death of Keats

John Ciardi

To Lucasta, about That War

John Ciardi

To Judith Asleep

John Ciardi

To Judith

John Ciardi

Thursday Also Happens

John Ciardi

Three Eggs Up

John Ciardi

Thoughts on Looking into a Thicket

John Ciardi

Temptation

John Ciardi

Sunday Morning

John Ciardi

Summer Evening

John Ciardi

Some Figures for Who I Am

John Ciardi

Serenade in a Drugstore

John Ciardi

S.P.Q.R.—A Letter from Rome

John Ciardi

Reverie During Briefing

John Ciardi

Reveille for My Twenty-Eighth Birthday

John Ciardi

Reflections while Oiling a Machine Gun

John Ciardi

Record Crowds at Beaches

John Ciardi

Quirks

John Ciardi

The Project

John Ciardi

Poem from a Hired Room

John Ciardi

Poem for My Twenty-Ninth Birthday

John Ciardi

Poem for My Thirtieth Birthday

John Ciardi

Poem for a Soldier’s Girl

John Ciardi

On the Patio

John Ciardi

On a Photograph of a German Soldier Dead in Poland

John Ciardi

Ode for the Burial of a Citizen

John Ciardi

Obsolescence

John Ciardi

No White Bird Sings

John Ciardi

Night Piece for My Twenty-Seventh Birthday

John Ciardi

Night Mail

John Ciardi

Night Celestial

John Ciardi

Mutterings

John Ciardi

Monday Morning Reveille

John Ciardi

Mission

John Ciardi

Metropolitan Ice Co.

John Ciardi

Measurements

John Ciardi

Massachusetts Bay

John Ciardi

Machine

John Ciardi

The Lungfish

John Ciardi

Love Poem

John Ciardi

Love Makes No Music

John Ciardi

Lines

John Ciardi

Letter to Virginia Johnson

John Ciardi

Letter for Those Who Grew up Together

John Ciardi

Launcelot in Hell

John Ciardi

Journal

John Ciardi

Hometown after a War

John Ciardi

Hometown

John Ciardi

Habitat

John Ciardi

Goodmorning with Light

John Ciardi

Girls Going to Church

John Ciardi

Friends

John Ciardi

Fortieth Anniversary Poem

John Ciardi

Flowering Quince

John Ciardi

First Snow on an Airfield

John Ciardi

Fast as You Can Count to Ten

John Ciardi

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