This paper examines the life and poetic philosophy of John Ciardi (1916–1986), an American poet shaped by his Midwestern sensibility, immigrant upbringing, and service as a B-29 gunner in World War II. Drawing on Ciardi's own writings — including Mid-Century American Poets and Dialogue with an Audience — the paper explores his conviction that poetry should "instruct while delighting," rather than pursue abstraction for its own sake. A close reading of his poem "Faces" illustrates how Ciardi translated this philosophy into practice, using plain, accessible language to illuminate a moment of human kindness and its lasting emotional resonance. The paper also touches on Ciardi's broader contributions to American literary culture through NPR appearances and literacy advocacy.
John Ciardi was born in Boston in 1916. The child of immigrant parents, he attended college in an era when a college education was still considered a privilege rather than an expected part of American life. College was the path to a better career and a path toward making something of oneself so that one could give back to society. Ciardi used the education he received from Bates College, Tufts College, and ultimately a master's degree earned in 1939 to do both.
The Midwest has a particular flavor to life that is somewhat lost in the high society of the East Coast. Life is about life itself — not the social trappings used to fill our days with entertainment and intrigue. Some poets of Ciardi's time, such as William Carlos Williams, took the impressionism of the era to an abstract extreme. The words became objects of the poem rather than the message, and the more disconnected the words — like a Picasso painting — the more the poem was considered extraordinary.
Ciardi's perspective was undoubtedly influenced by the flavor of life in the Midwest. He was also shaped by his tour of duty in the Pacific during World War II. A gunner in the Air Force, he flew on bombing raids over Japan in a B-29. Ciardi kept a journal during this time, which was subsequently published. He did not condemn the men of war as killing machines; his journal was a view of the men and women caught up in the conflict — lonely, tired, despairing of their future, and longing to return home. Events such as these change a man and create in him a heart that has little tolerance for the trappings of life that compete with our deeper search for meaning and purpose.
Ciardi took a practical view of the purpose of poetry. In his book Mid-Century American Poets, he wrote:
"Really creative art never turns its back on nature, and by nature I mean all parts of life and of earth that have not yet been transformed into art, including, obviously, the mind and soul of the poet himself. To create, an artist must transform some part of this raw material into a work of art."[1]
For Ciardi, poetry was a message to the people that was meant to "instruct and delight" — or more precisely, to instruct while delighting. In his later life, after the war, Ciardi turned much of his effort toward giving back to the community a share of the blessing he had received through his education. Making frequent appearances on National Public Radio, he directed his attention toward creating literature campaigns for school-age children. His perspective on writing is captured in a dialogue with himself in the book Dialogue with an Audience. In an imagined conversation with an average citizen, Ciardi offered his thesis regarding good poetry:
"The indispensable experience of knowledge that defines a civilized human being. The poem takes a man through the moment of experience to the moment of insight. It arouses and adds to his total sentience. Then let me add explicitly what is already implicit in them — that the experience of knowledge in a poem is always a self-delighting thing. As Horace put it, the end of poetry is 'to teach and delight,' or, more exactly rendered, 'teaching while delighting.'"[2]
For Ciardi, his purpose was not to push the boundaries of how words are put together and try readers' patience with disconnected language — fragments pasted to the page like torn, multicolored scraps of construction paper on a preschooler's poster board. Ciardi made sure his pieces of construction paper were cut and refined, fitting together in a complete picture like a beautiful mosaic. When he finished his creation, his meaning was clear, and he had delighted his audience with insight into a common piece of life. Of the writing process, he said: "It's not a how-to-do-it school, [but] more nearly a confessional in which people who have spent their lives at the writing process itemize their failures while clinging to their hopes."[3] On modern art, he remarked: "Modern art is what happens when painters stop looking at girls and persuade themselves they have a better idea."[4] His desire was to instruct us about ourselves, while delighting us and leaving behind a pleasant aftertaste.
Ciardi's Midwestern charm, combined with sharp intellectual training and a sense of fun, was evident in both his poetry and his personal appearances. In an NPR radio broadcast, he introduced himself this way:
"This is John Ciardi, your resident word freak, foibling away at his old forte. Please take that as a clumsy lead-in to a small song and dance on forte and foible. It is impossible to grasp entirely the sense of these two words until we know that they are from French fencing terminology, in which the forte is the half of a dueler's blade from midpoint to the handle — the strong, firm half — and the foible is the pliable half from the midpoint to the tip. I am no duelist, but as I understand it, a fencer who takes his opponent's foible on his forte is in a favorable position to parry and thrust. Strength against weakness."[5]
And so Ciardi parried and thrust his way into literature, using the strength of words against the weaknesses of others to paint a picture of life — to instruct and delight his reader, and to contribute to their understanding of both literature and themselves.
Ciardi's poem "Faces" is a wonderful journey into the possibilities of chance and how one person can forever leave a positive influence on another. Written in free verse, the poem tells the story of a personal journey. Ciardi is hitchhiking from Michigan to Boston in the middle of winter. The Midwestern winters are not to be argued with on a cold night, and Ciardi describes the wind-driven snow as "a stone cracking drill of wind that shot a grit of snow"[6] into his face as he held his thumb out on a wintry road. One can feel the darkness and cold as Ciardi describes the night as "black as the inside of a pig." He had likely never been inside a pig — nor had most readers — but the image is powerful, and the reader is left with no doubt about the bleakness of the winter road Ciardi traveled that evening.
Suddenly a friendly traveler pulled over and gave Ciardi a ride four or five miles up the road. The two don't talk much. One can suppose that in the dark of the night, Ciardi was trying to stop shivering and warm up in the cab of the car, while wondering how far his driver would take him. The poem has a conversational tone, as if the reader and the poet are sitting across from each other over coffee discussing the event. The driver soon stops and returns Ciardi to the night. And after the car is gone, the poet realizes that he never got a good look at his host. In the dark cab, the passing lights from the road left Ciardi with a half-formed image of a face. It is this image that gives the poem its name, and this thought forms the core of the poem's instruction and delight.
"Analysis of imagery and meaning in 'Faces'"
For Ciardi, his work was about pleasure. Not the sensual pleasure that has filled the ideology of abstract sentimentalists, but the pleasure of delighting in the commonness of a poem that strikes a chord in the common heartstrings of human existence. In Dialogue with an Audience, he writes:
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