In this study of Ciardi’s life, Edward Cifelli has captured all the deep concern, passion, and thoughtfulness that marked Ciardi’s long career in American letters. With care and penetrating detail, Cifelli evokes Ciardi’s early childhood in Boston, his Italian heritage, his service as a gunner on a B-29 during World War II, and his years teaching at Harvard and Rutgers. Illuminated here are Ciardi’s widely read contributions as an editor of Saturday Review and World magazines, as well as his tireless effort to bring an awareness and love of language and poetry to America through radio, television, the lecture circuit, and his twenty-six years on the staff of the famous Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, a gathering he directed for seventeen years.

“After editing collections of Ciardi’s letters and poetry, Cifelli offers a record of Ciardi’s accomplished life. As this diligently detailed biography shows, though Ciardi (who died in 1986) never got his long-hoped-for Pulitzer or a mandatory place in the anthologies, he compensated with a career that was lengthy, varied, and industrious—not to mention profitable. … Never part of any movement or school, except perhaps that of craftsmanship, Ciardi’s busy life spanned many hectic decades, and Cifelli provides a lively record of the man and his times.”
—Kirkus Reviews, August 1997