John Ciardi
John Ciardi
John Anthony Ciardiwas 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. In 1959, Ciardi published a book on how to read, write, and teach poetry, How Does a Poem Mean?, which has proven to be among the most-used books of its...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionDramatist
Date of Birth24 June 1916
One night I dreamed I was locked in my Father's watch With Ptolemy and twenty-one ruby stars Mounted on spheres and the Primum Mobile Coiled and gleaming to the end of space And the notched spheres eating each other's rinds To the last tooth of time, and the case closed.
Every parent is at some time the father of the unreturned prodigal, with nothing to do but keep his house open to hope.
The constitution gives every American the inalienable right to make a damn fool of himself.
Intelligence recognizes what has happened. Genius recognizes what will happen.
A dollar saved is a quarter earned.
A university is what a college becomes when the faculty loses interest in the students.
There's nothing wrong with sobriety in moderation.
A good question is never answered. It is not a bolt to be tightened into place but a seed to be planted and to bear more seed toward the hope of greening the landscape of idea.
Early to bed and early to rise probably indicates unskilled labor.
You don't have to suffer to be a poet; adolescence is enough suffering for anyone.
Fermentation and civilization are inseparable.
Within a single scene, it seems to be unwise to have access to the inner reflections of more than one character. The reader generally needs a single character as the means of perception, as the character to whom the events are happening, as the character with whom he is to empathize in order to have the events of the writing happen to him.
Poetry lies its way to the truth.
Love is the word used to label the sexual excitement of the young, the habituation of the middle-aged, and the mutual dependence of the old.