Andrew Beem

Life of John Ciardi, Italian-American Poet

This project was a like a gift for me. It gave me an opportunity to do something I wanted to for a long time. I am a fourth generation immigrant, but I have no real connection to the culture my family came from. My Mother was a third generation Italian immigrant. Since I have been interested in reading and writing I have always wondered about Italian-American writers. I never knew if any were famous and had never read any works by an Italian-American writer. This project gave me the opportunity to find out. I chose to research an Italian-American writer. I chose John Ciardi for my project.

            John Ciardi was born to Italian immigrants in Boston in 1916. He grew up to receive a Master’s Degree from the University of Michigan. He went on to publish more than forty volumes of poetry. Most famously he published How Does a Poem Mean? He also translated Dante’s Divine Comedy. He also taught at Harvard and Rutgers University. He died of a heart attack in 1986 (Poets.org).

            Ciardi became probably the most famous Italian-American poet. He did so by using a type of poetry that was very different from the modern poetry of the time. As Anthony Lioi points out in an essay, Ciardi “was obliged to prove that an ethnic poet could operate within the traditional norms of verse” (Lioi). Lioi points out that he was born to illiterate and uneducated immigrants and unlike writers like Eliot and Pound he did not have a background in English verse forms. Lioi points out that a person can really only break the rules of verse if they have them already. Ciardi’s poetry, unlike Eliot’s and Pound’s, follows a more traditional verse. He uses as his standard, the “unimportant poem”. It almost reminds readers of romantic lyric poetry of everyday experience (Lioi).

            Ciardi is also very well known for his children’s poetry. Unlike many people, he believes that children enjoy learning and reading. In fact, he believes that children enjoy meeting new words and overcoming them (Odland).  He also has a lot to say about what makes a good teacher. He says: “Unless a teacher has some openness of mind, some intellectual life, some awareness of the arts, all is lost” (Odland). Ciardi’s children’s poetry was aimed at expanding his children’s, and other children’s as well, sense and understanding language (Odland). . . .