He's probably best known for his translation of Dante's classic Inferno, but Ciardi own's work is also built to last. He may not have been J. Edgar Hoover's favorite writer, but he wrote smart poems such as:

Credibility

Who could believe an ant in theory?
a giraffe in blueprint?
Ten thousand doctors of what's possible
could reason half the jungle out of being.
I speak of love, and something more,
to say we are the thing that proves itself
not against reason, but impossibly true,
and therefore to teach reason reason.

Harold Check