num_pages: 246
description: A man may make so indelible a mark upon the lives of others that a place in time is re- served for him. In this memorial volume to celebrate the life and writings of John Ciardi, his friends and colleagues pay special tribute to an eminent twentieth-century man of letters. X.J. Kennedy and Lewis Turco discuss Lives of X, a neglected American classic, which chronicles the years Ciardi spent growing up in Medford, Massachusetts, studying at Tufts, and serving as a gunner in World War II. Richard Eberhart remembers the young Ciardi's unforgettable presence, while John Holmes and Roy W. Cowden recall him as a brilliant student and poet at Tufts and at Nlichigan, where he won the Avery Hopwood Award. Others remember him as a teacher at Harvard and Rutgers. Dan Jalle writes, "If John Ciardi held to any cause. it was the notion of precision, to an uncompromising excellence, to the notion that to strive was in itself not enough, that one needed to judge honestly, to assess courageously, and to respond without flinching." William Heyen and Norbert Krapf tell how the books I /Harry You and How Dow a Poem Mean? influenced them as young men. In "John The Many Lives of Poetry," John Nims claims Ciardi as our Chaucer. John Williams, Maxine Kumin, Diane Wakoski, and John Stone write about the Ciardi they knew at the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. Gay Wilson Allen describes the list of contributors to 'Measure of Man' as a "Who's Who" in American Literature. Certainly it is an impressive gathering of fellow writers and Friends who have been touched by John Ciardi. "We are all in his debt," Norman Cousins writes in his essay 'Ciardi at The Saturday Review', and it is important that we say so."
language: English
title: John Ciardi: Measure of the Man
titlecomplete: John Ciardi: Measure of the Man
ratings_count: 1
publisher: University of Arkansas Press