ABSTRACT
An initial glance at the “canon” of American poetry of the last 100 years would find few Italian names among the Eliots, Pounds, Doolittles, Stevenses, Merrills, and Ashberys. There is no easy explanation for this phenomenon, and it certainly does not lend itself quite so obviously to the socioeconomic interpretation given for the lack of poets among Italian Americans in the first half of the twentieth century. There is no well-delineated ethnic subgenre that one might call “Italian American poetry,” since all of these poets speak above all as Americans and as members of the human race. The Italian American poet who has found perhaps the most secure place in the American literary pantheon is John Ciardi (1916–1986). The story of Ciardi’s career as poet, teacher, critic, and author of children’s books is one of meteoric early success, excellence and national celebrity in his maturity, and decline in the later years.
