Conrad Potter Aiken (August 5, 1889 – August 17, 1973) was an American writer and poet, honored with a

Pulitzer Prize The Pulitzer Prize () is an award for achievements in newspaper, magazine, online journalism, literature, and musical composition within the United States. It was established in 1917 by provisions in the will of Joseph Pulitzer, who had made h ...

and a National Book Award, and was

United States Poet Laureate The Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress—commonly referred to as the United States Poet Laureate—serves as the official poet of the United States. During their term, the poet laureate seeks to raise the national cons ...

from 1950 to 1952. His published works include poetry, short stories,

novel A novel is a relatively long work of narrative fiction, typically written in prose and published as a book. The present English word for a long work of prose fiction derives from the for "new", "news", or "short story of something new", itsel ...

s, literary criticism, a play, and an autobiography.

Biography

Early years

Aiken was the eldest son of William Ford and Anna (Potter) Aiken. In Savannah, Aiken's father became a respected physician and eye surgeon, while his mother was the daughter of a prominent Massachusetts Unitarian minister. On February 27, 1901, Dr. Aiken murdered his wife and then committed suicide. According to his autobiography, ''Ushant'', Aiken, then 11 years old, heard the two gunshots and discovered the bodies immediately thereafter. After his parents' deaths, he was raised by his great-aunt and uncle in Cambridge, Massachusetts, attending

Middlesex School Middlesex School is a coeducational, non-sectarian, day and boarding independent secondary school for grades 9-12 located in Concord, Massachusetts. It was founded as an all-boys school in 1901 by a Roxbury Latin School alumnus, Frederick Winsor, ...

, then Harvard University. At Harvard, Aiken edited the ''

Advocate An advocate is a professional in the field of law. Different countries' legal systems use the term with somewhat differing meanings. The broad equivalent in many English law–based jurisdictions could be a barrister or a solicitor. However, ...

'' with

T. S. Eliot Thomas Stearns Eliot (26 September 18884 January 1965) was a poet, essayist, publisher, playwright, literary critic and editor.Bush, Ronald. "T. S. Eliot's Life and Career", in John A Garraty and Mark C. Carnes (eds), ''American National Biogr ...

, who became a lifelong friend, colleague, and influence. It was also at Harvard where Aiken studied under another significant influence in his writing, the philosopher George Santayana.

Adult years

Aiken was strongly influenced by symbolism, especially in his earlier works. In 1930 he received the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for his ''Selected Poems''. Many of his writings had strong psychological themes. He wrote the widely anthologized short story " Silent Snow, Secret Snow" (1934), partially based on his childhood tragedy. Other influences were Aiken's grandfather, Potter, who had been a church preacher, as well as Whitman's freestyle poetry. This helped Aiken shape his poetry more freely while his recognition of a God grounded his more visually rich explorations into the universe. Some of his best-known poetry, such as "Morning Song of Senlin", uses these influences to great effect. His collections of verse include ''Earth Triumphant'' (1914), ''The Charnel Rose'' (1918) and ''And In the Hanging Gardens'' (1933). His poem "Music I Heard" has been set to music by a number of composers, including

Leonard Bernstein Leonard Bernstein ( ; August 25, 1918 – October 14, 1990) was an American conductor, composer, pianist, music educator, author, and humanitarian. Considered to be one of the most important conductors of his time, he was the first America ...

Henry Cowell Henry Dixon Cowell (; March 11, 1897 – December 10, 1965) was an American composer, writer, pianist, publisher and teacher. Marchioni, Tonimarie (2012)"Henry Cowell: A Life Stranger Than Fiction" ''The Juilliard Journal''. Retrieved 19 June 202 ...

, and Helen Searles Westbrook. Aiken wrote or edited more than 51 books, the first of which was published in 1914, two years after his graduation from Harvard. His work includes novels, short stories (''The Collected Short Stories'' appeared in 1961), reviews, an autobiography, and poetry. He received numerous awards and honors for his writing, though for most of his lifetime, he received little public attention. Though Aiken was reluctant to speak of his early trauma and ensuing psychological problems, he acknowledged that his writings were strongly influenced by his studies of Sigmund Freud,

Carl G. Jung Carl Gustav Jung ( ; ; 26 July 1875 – 6 June 1961) was a Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst who founded analytical psychology. Jung's work has been influential in the fields of psychiatry, anthropology, archaeology, literature, philo ...

, Otto Rank, Ferenczi, Adler, and other depth psychologists. It wasn't until the publication of his autobiography, ''Ushant'', that Aiken revealed the emotional challenges that he had battled for much of his adult life. During the 1920s Freud heard of him and offered to psychoanalyze him. While aboard a Europe-bound ship to meet with Freud, Aiken was discouraged by

Erich Fromm Erich Seligmann Fromm (; ; March 23, 1900 – March 18, 1980) was a German social psychologist, psychoanalyst, sociologist, humanistic philosopher, and democratic socialist. He was a German Jew who fled the Nazi regime and settled in the U ...

from accepting the offer. Consequently, despite Freud's strong influence on Aiken, Aiken never met the noted psychoanalyst. As he later said, "Freud had read ''Great Circle'', and I’m told kept a copy on his office table. But I didn't go, though I started to. Misgivings set in, and so did poverty."

Personal life

Aiken had three younger siblings, Kempton Potter (K. P. A. Taylor), Robert Potter (R. P. A. Taylor), and Elizabeth. After their parents' deaths, the four children were adopted by Frederick Winslow Taylor and his wife Louise, their great-aunt. His siblings took Taylor's last name. Kempton helped establish the Aiken Taylor Award for Modern American Poetry. He was married three times: firstly to Jessie McDonald (1912–1929); secondly to Clarissa Lorenz (1930–1937) (author of a biography, ''Lorelei Two''); and thirdly to the painter Mary Hoover (1937–1973). He fathered three children by his first wife Jessie: John Aiken,

Jane Aiken Hodge Jane Aiken Hodge (December 4, 1917 – June 17, 2009) was an American-born British writer. Life Born near Cambridge, Massachusetts, the second child of Pulitzer prize-winning poet Conrad Aiken and his first wife, the writer Jessie McDonald. Jan ...

and Joan Aiken, all of whom became writers. Aiken married Jessie McDonald in 1912, and the couple moved to England in 1921 with their older two children; John (born 1913) and Jane (born 1917), settling in Rye, East Sussex (where the American novelist Henry James had once lived). The couple’s youngest daughter, Joan, was born in Rye in 1924. Conrad Aiken returned to Cambridge, Massachusetts, as a tutor at Harvard from 1927 to 1928. For many years, he divided his time between Rye, New York, and Boston. In 1931 he was introduced by the artist Paul Nash to Edward Burra, a painter also living in Rye. That year Burra painted his gouache "John Deth", inspired by Aiken's poem of that name and originally intended to illustrate a projected edition that was never realised. Nevertheless, the two men maintained a lifelong friendship thereafter. In 1936, Aiken met his third wife, Mary, in Boston. In the following year the couple visited

Malcolm Lowry Clarence Malcolm Lowry (; 28 July 1909 – 26 June 1957) was an English poet and novelist who is best known for his 1947 novel ''Under the Volcano'', which was voted No. 11 in the Modern Library 100 Best Novels list.

in Cuernavaca, Mexico, where Aiken divorced Clarissa and married Mary. The couple moved to Rye, where they remained until the outbreak of World War II in 1940. The Aikens settled in Brewster, Massachusetts, on Cape Cod, where he and his wife Mary later ran a summer program for writers and painters named after their antique farmhouse, "Forty-One Doors". Despite living for many years abroad and receiving recognition as a Southern writer, Aiken always considered himself an American, and, in particular, a New Englander. Over the years, he served '' in loco parentis'' as well as mentor to the English author

. In 1923 he acted as a witness at the marriage of his friend, poet

W. H. Davies William Henry Davies (3 July 1871 – 26 September 1940) was a Welsh poet and writer, who spent much of his life as a tramp or hobo in the United Kingdom and the United States, yet became one of the most popular poets of his time. His themes inc ...

. From 1950 to 1952, he served as

Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress The Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress—commonly referred to as the United States Poet Laureate—serves as the official poet of the United States. During their term, the poet laureate seeks to raise the national cons ...

, more commonly known as Poet Laureate of the United States. In 1960 he visited Grasmere in the

Lake District The Lake District, also known as the Lakes or Lakeland, is a mountainous region in North West England. A popular holiday destination, it is famous for its lakes, forests, and mountains (or ''fells''), and its associations with William Wordswor ...

, England (once the home of William Wordsworth), with his friend Edward Burra. The Aikens lived primarily at their farmhouse in West Brewster, and wintered in Savannah in a home adjacent to his early childhood house. Aiken died on 17 August 1973 and was buried in

Bonaventure Cemetery Bonaventure Cemetery is a rural cemetery located on a scenic bluff of the Wilmington River, east of Savannah, Georgia. The cemetery became famous when it was featured in the 1994 novel ''Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil'' by John Berendt, ...

in Savannah, Georgia on the banks of the Wilmington River, and so was Mary after her death in 1992. The burial site was featured in '' Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil'' by John Berendt. According to local legend, Aiken wished to have his tombstone fashioned in the shape of a bench as an invitation to visitors to stop and enjoy a martini at his grave. The bench is inscribed with "Give my love to the world", and "Cosmos Mariner—Destination Unknown". A primary source for information on Aiken's life is his autobiographical novel ''Ushant'' (1952), one of his major works. In it, he wrote candidly about his various affairs and marriages, his attempted suicide and fear of insanity, and his friendships with T. S. Eliot (who appears in the book as the Tsetse),

Ezra Pound Ezra Weston Loomis Pound (30 October 1885 – 1 November 1972) was an expatriate American poet and critic, a major figure in the early modernist poetry movement, and a Fascism, fascist collaborator in Italy during World War II. His works ...

(Rabbi Ben Ezra),

(Hambo), and others.

Awards and recognition

Named Poetry Consultant (now U.S. Poet Laureate) of the Library of Congress from 1950 to 1952, Aiken earned numerous prestigious writing honors, including a

in 1930 for ''Selected Poems'', the 1954 National Book Award for ''Collected Poems'',"National Book Awards – 1954"
National Book Foundation. Retrieved 2012-03-02.
(With acceptance speech by Aiken and essay by

Evie Shockley Evie Shockley is an American poet. Shockley received the 2012 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award in Poetry for her book ''the new black'' and the 2012 Holmes National Poetry Prize. She was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 2018. Early life and education ...

from the Awards 60-year anniversary blog.) the Bollingen Prize in Poetry, the National Institute of Arts and Letters Gold Medal in Poetry, and a National Medal for Literature. He was awarded a Guggenheim fellowship in 1934, Academy of American Poets fellowship in 1957, Huntington Hartford Foundation Award in 1960, and Brandeis University Creative Arts Award in 1967. Aiken was the first Georgia-born author to win a Pulitzer Prize, and was named Georgia's Poet Laureate in 1973. He was the first winner of the Poetry Society of America (PSA) Shelley Memorial Award, in 1929. In 2009,

the Library of America The Library of America (LOA) is a nonprofit publisher of classic American literature. Founded in 1979 with seed money from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Ford Foundation, the LOA has published over 300 volumes by authors rangi ...

selected Aiken's 1931 story "Mr. Arcularis" for inclusion in its two-century retrospective of American fantastic tales.

Selected works

Poetry collections

* ''Earth Triumphant'' (Aiken, 1914)
available online at archive.org
* ''Turns and Movies and other Tales in Verse'' (Aiken, 1916, Houghton Mifflin)
available online at archive.org
* ''The Jig of Forslin: A Symphony'', 1916 * ''Nocturne of Remembered Spring: And Other Poems'' (Aiken, 1917)
available online at archive.org
* ''Charnel Rose'' (Aiken, 1918)
available online at archive.org
* ''The House of Dust: A Symphony'', 1920 * ''Punch: The Immortal Liar, Documents in His History'', 1921 * ''Priapus and the Pool'', 1922 * ''The Pilgrimage of Festus'', 1923 * ''Priapus and the Pool, and Other Poems'', 1925 * ''Selected Poems'', 1929 * ''John Deth, A Metaphysical Legacy, and Other Poems'', 1930 * ''The Coming Forth by Day of Osiris Jones'', 1931 * ''Preludes for Memnon'', 1931 * ''Landscape West of Eden'', 1934 * ''Time in the Rock; Preludes to Definition'', 1936 * ''And in the Human Heart'', 1940 * ''Brownstone Eclogues, and Other Poems'', 1942 * ''The Soldier: A Poem'', 1944 * ''The Kid'', 1947 * ''The Divine Pilgrim'', 1949 * ''Skylight One: Fifteen Poems'', 1949 * ''Collected Poems'', 1953 * ''A Letter from

Li Po Li Bai (, 701–762), also pronounced as Li Bo, courtesy name Taibai (), was a Chinese poet, acclaimed from his own time to the present as a brilliant and romantic figure who took traditional poetic forms to new heights. He and his friend Du Fu ...

and Other Poems'', 1955 * ''Sheepfold Hill: Fifteen Poems'', 1958 * ''The Morning Song of Lord Zero, Poems Old and New'', 1963 * ''Thee: A Poem'', 1967 * ''Collected Poems'', 2nd ed., 1970

Short stories

* "''Bring! Bring!''" * "''The Last Visit''" * "''Mr. Arcularis''" * "''The Bachelor Supper''" * "''Bow Down, Isaac!''" * "''A Pair of Vikings''" * "''Hey, Taxi!''" * "''Field of Flowers''" * "''Gehenna''" * "''The Disciple''" * "''Impulse''" * "''The Anniversary''" * "''Hello, Tib''" * "''Smith and Jones''" * "''By My Troth, Nerisa!''" * "'' Silent Snow, Secret Snow''" * "''Round by Round''" * "''Thistledown''" * "''State of Mind''" * "''Strange Moonlight''" * "''The Fish Supper''" * "''I Love You Very Dearly''" * "''The Dark City''" * "''Life Isn't a Short Story''" * "''The Night Before Prohibition''" * "''Spider, Spider''" * "''A Man Alone at Lunch''" * "''Farewell! Farewell! Farewell!''" * "''Your Obituary, Well Written''" * "''A Conversation''" * "''No, No, Go Not to Lethe''" * "''Pure as the Driven Snow''" * "''All, All Wasted''" * "''The Moment''" * "''The Woman-Hater''" * "''The Professor's Escape''" * "''The Orange Moth''" * "''The Necktie''" * "''O How She Laughed!''" * "''West End''" * "''Fly Away Ladybird''"

Novels

* ''Blue Voyage'' (1927) * ''Great Circle'' (1933) * '' King Coffin'' (1935) * ''A Heart for the Gods of Mexico'' (1939) * ''The Conversation'' (1940)

Other books

* ''Scepticisms: Notes on Contemporary Poetry'' (1919) * ''Ushant'' (1952) * ''A Reviewer's ABC: Collected Criticism of Conrad Aiken from 1916 to the Present'' (1958) * ''Collected Short Stories'' (1960) * ''Collected Short Stories of Conrad Aiken'' (1965)

References

External links

* * *
Poems by Conrad Aiken
An extensive collection of Aiken's poetry

Biography *
New Georgia Encyclopedia entryFamous Poets and Poems, Aiken BiographyBookrags.com
* * ttp://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:FHCL.Hough:hou01346 Guides to Conrad Aiken's prosebr>poetry
an
correspondence
a
Houghton Library
Harvard University *
Conrad Aiken
historical marker
Conrad Aiken
at the Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library {{DEFAULTSORT:Aiken, Conrad 1889 births 1973 deaths 19th-century American novelists 19th-century American short story writers 19th-century American male writers 20th-century American male writers 20th-century American novelists 20th-century American poets 20th-century American short story writers 20th-century Unitarians American male novelists American male poets American male short story writers American Poets Laureate American Unitarians Bollingen Prize recipients Burials in Georgia (U.S. state) Federal Writers' Project people Harvard Advocate alumni Members of the American Academy of Arts and Letters Middlesex School alumni National Book Award winners Novelists from Georgia (U.S. state) Poets from Georgia (U.S. state) Pulitzer Prize for Poetry winners Writers from Savannah, Georgia Poets Laureate of Georgia (U.S. state)