"It is Mr. Ciardi's great merit to be one of the first American translators to have...reproduced [
The Inferno] successfully in English. A text with the clarity and sobriety of a first-rate prose translation which at the same time suggests in powerful and unmistakable ways the run and rhythm of the great original...A spectacular achievement."--Archibald MacLeish
"Fresh and sharp...I think [Ciardi's] version of Dante will be in many respects the best we have seen."--John Crowe Ransom
John Ciardi was a distinguished poet and professor, having taught at Harvard and Rutgers universities, and a poetry editor of The Saturday Review. He was a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Institute of Arts and Letters. In 1955 he won the Harriet Monroe Memorial Award, and in 1956, the Prix de Rome. He died in 1986.