Conrad Aiken

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Conrad Potter Aiken (August 5, 1889 – August 17, 1973) was a Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist and poet, born in Savannah, Georgia, whose work includes poetry, short stories, novels, and an autobiography.[1]

Contents

[edit] Biography

[edit] Childhood and youth

When Conrad Aiken was eleven years of age, his physician father killed his mother, then himself because of family financial problems. According to his own writings, Aiken found the bodies of his parents.[2] He was raised by his great-great-aunt in Massachusetts. Aiken was educated at private schools and at Middlesex School in Concord, Massachusetts, then at Harvard University where he edited the Advocate with T. S. Eliot. Aiken graduated in 1912.

[edit] Writing and later life

He was deeply 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 psychological themes.

He wrote the widely anthologised short story Silent Snow, Secret Snow (1934); his collections of verse include Earth Triumphant (1911), 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 and Henry Cowell.

Aiken returned to Savannah for the last 11 years of his life. Aiken's tomb, located in Bonaventure Cemetery on the banks of the Wilmington River, was made famous by its mention in Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, the bestselling book 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. Its inscriptions read "Give my love to the world," and "Cosmos Mariner—Destination Unknown."

[edit] Marriages and children

Married first to Jessie McDonald, second to Clarissa Lorenz (author of a biography, Lorelei Two), and third to Mary Hoover. He is the father, by Jessie McDonald, of the English writers Joan Aiken and Jane Aiken Hodge.

[edit] Siblings

Aiken had three younger siblings, Kemper, Robert, and Elizabeth. They were adopted by a relative and took his last name. Kemper was known as K. P. A. Taylor (Kemper Potter Aiken Taylor) and Robert was known as Robert P. A. Taylor (Robert Potter Aiken Taylor). Kemper helped establish the Aiken Taylor Award for Modern American Poetry.

[edit] Quotations

All lovely things must have an ending
All lovely things must fade and die
And Youth, that's now so bravely spending
Must beg a penny by and by
Fine ladies soon are all forgotten,
And goldenrod is dust when dead,
The sweetest flesh and flowers are rotten
And cobwebs tent the brightest head.
Come back, true love! Sweet youth, return!--
But time goes on, and will, unheeding,
Though hands will reach, and eyes will yearn,
And the wild days set true hearts bleeding.
Come back, true love! Sweet youth, remain!--
But goldenrod and daisies wither,
And over them blows autumn rain,
They pass, they pass, and know not whither.
— From All Lovely Things
Over the darkened city, the city of towers,
The city of a thousand gates,
Over the gleaming terraced roofs, the huddled towers,
Over a somnolent whisper of loves and hates,
The slow wind flows, drearily streams and falls,
With a mournful sound down rain-dark walls.
— From The House of Dust

[edit] Bibliography

  • Earth Triumphant, (1911, poetry)
  • The Jig of Forslin, (1916, narrative poem)
  • The Charnel Rose, (1918, poetry)
  • The Blue Voyage, (1926, novel)
  • Costumes and Eros, (1929, short stories)
  • Gehenna, (1930, short stories)
  • Selected Poems, (1930, poetry)
  • John Death: A Metaphysical Legend (1931, poetry)
  • Great Circle, (1933, novel)
  • And In the Hanging Gardens, (1933, poetry)
  • Silent Snow, Secret Snow, (1934, short stories)
  • Among the Lost People, (1934, short stories)
  • Bring! Bring! Bring!, (1935, short stories)
  • King Coffin, (1935, novel)
  • A Heart for All the Gods of Mexico, (1939, novel)
  • Conversations, (1940, novel)
  • Skylight One, (1949, poetry)
  • The Collected Stories of Conrad Aiken, (1960, short stories)
  • Morning Song for Lord Zero, (1963, poetry)
  • Cats And Bats And Things With Wings, (1965, poetry)
  • Thee, (1967, poetry)
  • Being the Diary of a Queer Man, (1971, poetry)
  • Ushant, (1973, autobiographical novel)
  • Charnel Rose, Senlin and Other Poems, (1982, poetry)

[edit] References

  1. ^ Conrad Aiken
  2. ^ Conrad Aiken


[edit] External links

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