For Instance: Poems

John Ciardi published his first poem in <em>Poetry</em> magazine in 1939. The forty year since have been fruitful ones. His translation of<em>The Divine Comedy</em> is the definitive American rendering. His <em>How Does a Poem Mean?</em>, 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.