Conrad Aiken facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Conrad Aiken
Born	Conrad Potter Aiken (1889-08-05)August 5, 1889 Savannah, Georgia, United States
Died	August 17, 1973(1973-08-17) (aged 84) Savannah, Georgia, United States
Occupation	Poet playwright essayist novelist critic
Spouse	Jessie McDonald (1912–1929) Clarissa Lorenz (1930) Mary Hoover (1937)
Children	John, Jane Aiken Hodge, and Joan Aiken

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

Aiken wrote many different kinds of books. These included poetry, short stories, novels, and literary criticism. He also wrote a play and his own life story.

Conrad Aiken's Life Story

His Early Years

Conrad Aiken was the oldest child of William Ford and Anna (Potter) Aiken. His father was a respected doctor in Savannah, Georgia. His mother's father was a well-known minister.

When Conrad was 11 years old, something very sad happened. He heard two gunshots and found his parents had died. After this, his great-aunt and uncle raised him. He grew up in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He went to Middlesex School and then Harvard University.

At Harvard, Aiken worked on the Advocate magazine. He worked with T. S. Eliot, who became his good friend. Eliot was a big influence on Aiken's writing. Aiken also studied with the philosopher George Santayana at Harvard. Santayana also helped shape Aiken's writing style.

His Adult Life

Conrad Aiken was greatly influenced by a style called symbolism. This was especially true in his early works. In 1930, he won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. He won it for his book called Selected Poems.

Many of his writings explored how people think and feel. He wrote a famous short story called "Silent Snow, Secret Snow" (1934). This story was partly based on the difficult events of his childhood.

Other people also influenced Aiken's work. His grandfather, Potter, was a church preacher. The poet Walt Whitman's free-style poetry also inspired him. These influences helped Aiken write poetry more freely. His belief in God also guided his deep explorations of the world. Some of his best-known poems show these influences. An example is "Morning Song of Senlin".

His poetry collections include Earth Triumphant (1914) and The Charnel Rose (1918). Another one is And In the Hanging Gardens (1933). His poem "Music I Heard" has been turned into songs by many composers. These include Leonard Bernstein and Henry Cowell.

Aiken wrote or edited more than 51 books. His first book came out in 1914. This was two years after he finished Harvard. His works include novels, short stories, and reviews. He also wrote an autobiography and many poems. He won many awards for his writing. However, for most of his life, he was not very famous to the public.

Aiken did not like to talk much about his early life. He also had some emotional challenges. But he did say that his writing was greatly influenced by his studies. He learned about Sigmund Freud and Carl G. Jung. These were important thinkers in understanding the human mind.

He later wrote about his emotional challenges in his autobiography, Ushant. In the 1920s, Freud heard about Aiken. Freud offered to help him. Aiken started a trip to meet Freud. But another person, Erich Fromm, told him not to go. So, Aiken never met Freud. Even so, Freud's ideas had a strong impact on Aiken's writing.

His Personal Life

Conrad Aiken had three younger siblings. Their names were Kempton, Robert, and Elizabeth. After their parents died, Frederick Winslow Taylor and his wife Louise adopted the four children. Louise was their great-aunt. His siblings took Taylor's last name. Kempton later helped create the Aiken Taylor Award for Modern American Poetry.

Aiken was married three times. His first wife was Jessie McDonald (1912–1929). His second wife was Clarissa Lorenz (1930–1937). His third wife was the painter Mary Hoover (1937–1973). He had three children with his first wife, Jessie. All three children became writers. Their names were John Aiken, Jane Aiken Hodge, and Joan Aiken.

Conrad Aiken married Jessie McDonald in 1912. In 1921, they moved to England with their two older children. John was born in 1913, and Jane in 1917. They settled in Rye, East Sussex. Their youngest daughter, Joan, was born there in 1924.

Conrad Aiken returned to Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1927. He taught at Harvard for a year. For many years, he spent his time between Rye, New York, and Boston. In 1931, he met the painter Edward Burra. Burra also lived in Rye. Burra painted a picture called "John Deth". It was inspired by Aiken's poem of the same name. The two men remained friends for life.

In 1936, Aiken met his third wife, Mary, in Boston. The next year, they visited Malcolm Lowry in Mexico. There, Aiken divorced Clarissa and married Mary. The couple moved back to Rye. They stayed there until World War II started in 1940.

The Aikens then settled in Brewster, Massachusetts, on Cape Cod. There, he and Mary ran a summer program for writers and painters. It was named "Forty-One Doors" after their old farmhouse. Aiken lived in other countries for many years. He was also known as a Southern writer. But he always thought of himself as an American from New England.

Over the years, Aiken helped and guided the English author Malcolm Lowry. From 1950 to 1952, Aiken was the Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress. This job is now known as the Poet Laureate of the United States.

The Aikens mostly lived at their farmhouse in West Brewster. They spent winters in Savannah. Their Savannah home was next to the house where Conrad grew up.

Conrad Aiken died on August 17, 1973. He was buried in Bonaventure Cemetery in Savannah, Georgia. His wife Mary was buried there too after she died in 1992. His burial spot was mentioned in the book Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.

There is a local story that Aiken wanted his tombstone to be a bench. He wanted visitors to sit and enjoy a drink at his grave. The bench has these words carved on it: "Give my love to the world" and "Cosmos Mariner—Destination Unknown".

A main source of information about Aiken's life is his autobiographical novel Ushant (1952). This is one of his most important works.

Awards and Honors

Conrad Aiken was named Poetry Consultant (now U.S. Poet Laureate) for the Library of Congress from 1950 to 1952. He won many important writing awards.

He won a Pulitzer Prize in 1930 for Selected Poems. In 1954, he won the National Book Award for Collected Poems. He also received the Bollingen Prize in Poetry. Other awards include the National Institute of Arts and Letters Gold Medal in Poetry. He also got a National Medal for Literature.

Aiken received a Guggenheim fellowship in 1934. He got an Academy of American Poets fellowship in 1957. He also won the Huntington Hartford Foundation Award in 1960. In 1967, he received the Brandeis University Creative Arts Award.

Conrad Aiken was the first author born in Georgia to win a Pulitzer Prize. He was named Georgia's Poet Laureate in 1973. He was also the first person to win the Poetry Society of America (PSA) Shelley Memorial Award in 1929.

In 2009, the Library of America chose Aiken's 1931 story "Mr. Arcularis". They included it in their collection of American fantasy tales.

Selected Works

Poetry Collections

• Earth Triumphant (1914)
• Turns and Movies and other Tales in Verse (1916)
• The Jig of Forslin: A Symphony (1916)
• Nocturne of Remembered Spring: And Other Poems (1917)
• Charnel Rose (1918)
• 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 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)

Images for kids

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  Bench at the grave of Conrad Aiken in Bonaventure Cemetery in Savannah, Georgia

See also

In Spanish: Conrad Aiken para niños