a happy obsession

After graduating from three different universities and serving three years in the Air Force, poet John Ciardi embarked on an unbelievably successful literary career which lasted for nearly 46 years, publishing 24 books of verse and receiving nearly 20 awards in his lifetime. This multifaceted career was not limited to poetry, although poetry was the predominant reason for his popularity; Ciardi was also a renowned (and in some ways, infamous) critic, editor, professor, anthologist, children’s writer and etymologist. His experience as a scholar of English and as an editor impacted his style enormously and was directly related to his tempestuous relationship with the developing community of contemporary poets of the time. He was known for being very outspokenly critical of writers who said more than was needed simply because they were too consumed by their own unawareness; from Ciardi’s perspective these individuals were namely new-age poets who wrote for their own sake rather than the reader’s. His forthrightness worked quite well considering his own authentic love affair with language landed him with a brimming bank account.
Ciardi wore many a literary hat during the span of his career – he was a Professor of English both in Rutgers University and as at Harvard and devoted nearly 30 years to lecturing and directing the Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference. Though he played many roles in this respect, his approach to writing never changed dramatically and rarely, if ever, lost focus. His words were always channeled toward the general public. Ciardi was very vocal in terms of making poetry accessible to the masses – an approach not even marginally accepted by his peers until the late 1950s. Although he by no means sacrificed his own approval of his works for popularity, he still managed to gain a large following because of the intellectual yet approachable elements in his work. It was Ciardi’s desire that the general public would someday be brought together by more than just an interest in poetry.
In The Stoneworks (1961), was Ciardi’s 8th book of poetry. It exemplifies the styles that he employed throughout his entire career – not overemphasizing anything, saying only what needed to be said, making use of the natural world and the most basic & yet most intimate human relationships to show the reader something about their own reality that perhaps they did not see before. The year that he published In The Stoneworks was actually the same year in which Ciardi left his teaching positions at Harvard and Rutgers – a decision that allowed him to further pursue his own literary undertakings full-time, although throughout the rest of his career he did continue to participate in the world of academia via lectures, television appearances and poetry readings.
Ciardi, throughout his career, brought on a lot of disapproval from his peers in criticizing newer contemporary poetic tendencies. Though Ciardi’s work was never totally drowned by any of these new trends, he isolated himself by being openly critical of the shifting values insofar as what constituted “good” poetry. He always insisted that poetry demanded practice; that it is not easy but that the creative process is rather unbearably, wonderfully difficult because it forces one to face failure (Contemporary Authors Online). He is known for having been very frank and obsessing over the re-evaluation of himself and his work time and time again until the poem could be more or less perfected – in his mind, the poem was the central authority, not its author. He valued very much the notion of learning from mistakes; of being able to grow out of bad writing and make something better.
Another reason why John Ciardi was so widely loved by the public and (likely) why he rejected the fluff of many new contemporary poets is because he never tried to overcomplicate what he was trying to write or make into something it couldn’t be. Said Ciardi on this subject: “I'm not a complicated man and I don't have any gripping internal problems. But I get interested in things. Words have become a happy obsession" (McCarty). In fact, for a portion of his writing career, Ciardi fueled fully his fascination in etymology and where certain words even come from – this fascination resulted in his publishing several volumes of The Broswer’s Dictionary, a method which he hoped would bring the meticulous nature of language-loving closer to the public. Ciardi loved language. He used it to write about anything he could – hurricanes, history, sex, grace, gardens, death; and he did it tremendously well, all the way until his death on Easter Sunday in 1986.


Works Cited
Seaman, Donna. "The Collected Poems of John Ciardi." Booklist 15 Apr. 1997: 1377. Gale Biography In Context. Web. 3 Feb. 2011.
"John Ciardi." Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2007. Gale Biography In Context. Web. 3 Feb. 2011
McCarty, Mary. "Cincinnati Magazine." Editorial. Cincinnati Magazine Dec. 1985: 100-05. Google Books. Web. 4 Feb. 2011.


Works of Poetry John Ciardi
• Homeward to America, Holt, 1940.
• Other Skies, Atlantic Monthly Press, 1947.
• Live Another Day: Poems, Twayne, 1949.
• From Time to Time, Twayne, 1951.
• As If: Poems New and Selected, Rutgers University Press, 1955.
• I Marry You: A Sheaf of Love Poems, Rutgers University Press, 1958.
• Thirty-Nine Poems, Rutgers University Press, 1959.
• In the Stoneworks, Rutgers University Press, 1961.
• In Fact, Rutgers University Press, 1962.
• Person to Person, Rutgers University Press, 1964.
• This Strangest Everything, Rutgers University Press, 1966.
• An Alphabestiary, Lippincott, 1967.
• A Genesis, Touchstone Publishers (New York, NY), 1967.
• The Achievement of John Ciardi: A Comprehensive Selection of his Poems with a Critical Introduction (poetry textbook), edited by Miller Williams, Scott, Foresman, 1969.
• Lives of X (autobiographical poetry), Rutgers University Press, 1971.
• On the Orthodoxy and Creed of My Power Mower, Pomegranate Press (Cambridge, MA), 1972.
• The Little That Is All, Rutgers University Press, 1974.
• For Instance, Norton, 1979.
• Selected Poems, University of Arkansas Press, 1984.
• The Birds of Pompeii, University of Arkansas Press, 1985.
• Echoes: Poems Left Behind, University of Arkansas Press, 1989.
• Poems of Love and Marriage, University of Arkansas Press, 1989.
• Stations on the Air, Bookmark Press of the University of Missouri-Kansas City, 1993.
• The Collected Poems of John Ciardi, University of Arkansas Press (Fayetteville, AK), 1997.