Conrad Aiken

Conrad Potter Aiken (August 5, 1889 – August 17, 1973) was an American writer and poet, honored with a Pulitzer Prize and a National Book Award, and was United States Poet Laureate from 1950 to 1952.

His published works include poetry, short stories, novels, literary criticism, a play, and an autobiography.

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, then Harvard University.

At Harvard, Aiken edited the Advocate with T. S. Eliot, 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.

Aiken was strongly influenced by symbolism, especially in his earlier works.

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 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).

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, Henry Cowell, 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.

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 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."

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.

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 1930 he received the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for his Selected Poems.

Many of his writings had strong psychological themes.

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 realized.

Nevertheless, the two men maintained a lifelong friendship thereafter.

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 on great effect.

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, 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.