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
Nothing goes further toward a man's liberation than the act of surviving his need for character.
I have one head that wants to be good, And one that wants to be bad. And always, as soon as I get up, One of my heads is sad.
Fermentation equals civilization.
To read a poem with no thought in mind but to paraphrase it into a single, simple and usually high-minded prose statement is the destruction of poetry.
A savage is simply a human organism that has not received enough news from the human race.
A neighborhood is a residential area that is changing for the worse.
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.