John Anthony Ciardi was born in Boston, Massachusetts. He attended Bates College and was graduated from Tufts College magna cum laude in 1938; in 1939 he received an M.A. from the University of Michig...
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Critical Essay by M. L. Rosenthal
[John Ciardi's] war poems generally, and his love poems and political and satirical pieces, make him a graphic spokesman for the liberal and literate mind tod...
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Critical Essay by Judson Jerome
No one (least of all, I imagine, John Ciardi) would call "In Fact," his ninth collection of poetry, a great book or even a particularly important one. Bu...
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Critical Essay by Laurence Perrine
I read [Ciardi's "Tenzone"] as a competition in which both [the Soul and Body, the poem's speakers,] attack the Soul: the Soul first att...
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Critical Essay by John W. Hughes
Like Sinyavsky, Ciardi has been deemed a subversive by certain mealy-mouthed inquisitors, but his true subversiveness eludes the wranglings of House committees. For L...
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Critical Essay by Edward Cifelli
Ciardi possesses an authentic poetic voice with a technical mastery of his craft to match his spiritual affinity for it. (p. 21)
[Ciardi] focuses with remarkable c...
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In a way, it goes back to the spirit of the early Edgy Enthusiast columns, which were numbered riffs on cultural obsessions. Playlists, even—dare I say it? —pre-blog blogging. Not real...
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Think of this week's column as a play list for the overeducated, the media-saturated, the culturally jaded: things you may have missed, things you ought not miss, things you still can see and hear....
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John (Anthony) Ciardi
Critical Essay by M. L. Rosenthal
Sensational Arts News! You Won't Find These Hot Squibs Anywhere
