Aiken, Conrad Potter (1889–1973)

US poet, novelist, and short-story writer. His Selected Poems (1929) won a Pulitzer Prize. His works were influenced by early psychoanalytic theory and the use of the stream-of-consciousness technique. His verse, distinguished by its musicality, includes ‘A Letter from Li Po’ (1955) and A Seizure of Limericks (1964). His novels include Great Circle (1933), and his collected short stories were published in 1960.

Born in Savannah, Georgia, Aiken grew up in New England with relatives after his father, a doctor, killed his mother and then committed suicide. In his autobiography Ushant (1952), he confronts this traumatic experience. He graduated from Harvard University in 1911 and began to write poetry. Some of Aiken's poetry is in the form of ‘symphonies’, works that attempt to imitate music in its ability to convey meaning on several levels at once. His poetic works include The House of Dust (1920), Senlin (1925), Brownstone Eclogues and Other Poems (1942), Collected Poems (1953), and Sheepford Hills (1957). His novels include The Voyage (1927) and Conversation (1940) and his short stories were published as The Collected Short Stories of Conrad Aiken (1960).