For Instance

by John Ciardi

Just as Ciardi has never joined a group, so he has never asked that his poems be approved―they are simply there, written as they demanded to be written from inside their own experience of themselves. They are there―and they will not go away. John Ciardi published his first poem in Poetry magazine in 1939. The forty year since have been fruitful ones. His translation of The Divine Comedy is the definitive American rendering. His How Does a Poem Mean? , now in a new edition with revisions by Miller Williams, has introduced hundreds of thousands of students to the liveliness of poetry. Above all, John Ciardi is a poet and one of the voices of our literature. This is his fourteenth volume of poems. It demonstrates again that there is a body of poetry specific to his voice, eye, and manner.

Genres: Poetry

72 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 1979

About the author

John Anthony Ciardi was an American poet, translator, editor, writer and etymologist.

Reviews

[Brendan]

Rating: 3 1/2

Poetry in three sections: "Machine", "On the Patio", and "Trying to Feel Something". A lot of it bored me. But some of it did not.

Favorites:
"Bicentennial" - references William Carlos Williams
"Scene Twelve: Take Seven"
"Trying to Feel Something" - references three poets who suicided
"Donna ch'avete intelleto d'amore" - a funny one

I had been in Italy rinsing my vowels.
She had been in Medford, Massachussetts
thickening her tongue on English crusts.
- "Firsts"