John Ciardi

John Anthony Ciardi (born June 24, 1916 in Boston , Massachusetts , † March 30, 1986 in Edison , New Jersey ) was an American poet , translator , etymologist and university professor .

Life

After attending Bates College , he studied at Tufts University and graduated in 1938 with a Bachelor of Arts (BA). A subsequent postgraduate course at the University of Michigan , he finished in 1939 with a Master of Arts (MA) and then took up a teaching position as a professor at the University of Missouri-Kansas City .

Ciardi, who made his literary debut in 1940 with the publication of the anthology Homeward to America , did his military service in the US Army Air Corps from 1942 to 1945 as an air gunner during the Second World War . After the end of the World War he resumed teaching and was later also Professor of English at Harvard University from 1946 to 1953 and at Rutgers University from 1953 to 1961.

He gained recognition above all for his complete translation of Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy into English in three volumes: The Inferno (1954), The Purgatorio (1961) and The Paradiso (1970).

Between 1956 and 1972 he was also the editor in charge of poetry at the weekly newspaper The Saturday Review . Based on the text book How Does a Poem Mean? (1960) appeared the anthologies Person to Person (1964) and The Little That Is All (1974), before he published the volume of poems Limericks, Too Gross (1978) together with Isaac Asimov . In it, for example, they argued about whether titles were allowed at a limerick or not.

Ciardi was also a columnist for National Public Radio , a public, loosely organized collaboration of radio stations in the United States that was launched in 1967. After the volume of poetry For Instance (1979), the dictionary A Browser's Dictionary and Native's Guide to the Unknown American Language was published in 1980 , which was followed in 1981 by a further volume of poetry together with Asimov entitled A Grossery of Limericks . In 1983 he continued his dictionary A Second Browser's Dictionary and Native's Guide to the Unknown American Language, and in 1985 the anthology The Birds of Pompeii was published .

Ciardi had been a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences since 1953 and of the American Academy of Arts and Letters since 1957 . In 1997 a volume of poetry was published posthumously with the title The Collected Poems of John Ciardi .

Background literature

• William White: John Ciardi. A Bibliography. Wayne State University Press, Detroit MI 1959.
• Miller Williams (Ed.): The Achievement of John Ciardi. A comprehensive selection of his poems with a critical introduction. Scott, Foresman and Co., Glenview IL 1969.
• Vince Clemente (Ed.): John Ciardi, Measure of the Man. University of Arkansas Press, Fayetteville AR 1987, ISBN 0-938626-79-5 .
• Edward M. Cifelli: The Selected Letters of John Ciardi. University of Arkansas Press, Fayetteville AR 1991, ISBN 1-557-28171-8 .
• Edward M. Cifelli: John Ciardi. A biography. University of Arkansas Press, Fayetteville AR 1998, ISBN 1-55728-539-X

Web links and sources

• John Ciardi in the nndb (English)
• Biography (poets.org)
• Biography (harvardsquarelibrary.org)
• Biography (poetryfoundation.org)
• Biography and works (italianamericanwriters.com)

Individual evidence

1. ^ Members of the American Academy. Listed by election year, 1950-1999 ( [1] ). Retrieved September 23, 2015
2. ^ Members: John Ciardi. American Academy of Arts and Letters, accessed February 22, 2019 . 
3. ^ Google Books .