Word: ciardi
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...boosters tend to think of the Saturday Review as the house organ of higher culture in America. For it was from there, a year ago last May, that the first salvo of literary enthusiasm was discharged, by the noted American poet and fearless antagonist of Anne Morrow Lindbergh, John Ciardi. "Archibald MacLeish's J.B. is great poetry, great drama, and--as far as my limitations permit me to sense it--great stagecraft," he proclaimed in the opening sentence of his article, "The Birth of a Classic." A prefatory note explained that SR's poetry editor was saluting the work...
...Ciardi had misgivings about the ability of commercial old lowbrow America to recognize true Greatness overnight. "J.B., it must be added, is strong stuff," he warned. "Too strong, one knows, for Broadway success this season or next." But eventually all would be well, he concluded: "And yet Broadway will come to it in time, because it must, because great imagination and great talent cannot be denied forever. Meanwhile, Yale is preparing it for production, and certainly the summer theatres and the college groups throughout the country will have found a new star forever. For J.B. adds a dimension...
...then, on the cold, wet night of December eleventh, 1958--just eight short months after John Ciardi had despaired of a major professional production for years to come--on the stage of the ANTA Theatre, at the corner of 52nd Street and Broadway, Archibald MacLeish's "play in verse" received its New York City premiere. The production had enlisted a somewhat disparate but unquestionably distinguished group of the biggest talents in the business: Elia Kazan, Boris Aronson, Raymond Massey, Christopher Plummer, Pat Hingle. Everyone involved, in Newsweek's candid prose, was taking "a calculated risk; the drama had arrived...
Poetry should be judged qua poetry, not by the name in the upper left-hand corner of the MS.-so orchids to one John Ciardi for his criticism of Anne Lindbergh's poetry. In The Unicorn, as in all her other books, she sees and thinks and feels with monotonous regularity. She may be a splendid person, but she's a lousy poet. Critic Ciardi is so right, and I'm glad he had the courage to speak...
...Ciardi's Dilemma...