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

Contents

Early Years

Career

Personal

Quotations

Selected bibliography

References

External links

Early Years

When he 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.^[1] 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.

Career

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."
He is the father of English writers Joan Aiken and Jane Aiken Hodge.

Personal

Married first to Jessie McDonald, second to Clarissa Lorenz (author of a biography, ''Lorelei Two''), and third to Mary Hoover.
Children (by his first wife): John Aiken, Joan Aiken, Jane Aiken Hodge.

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
::— 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''

Selected bibliography

★ ''Cats And Bats And Things With Wings'' - 1965(Poems)

References

1. http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/caiken.htm
2. http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/caiken.htm

External links

★ Read Aiken's interview in The Paris Review

★

★ ''The House of Dust'' (1920)

★ Conrad Aiken: Unitarian Prodigy Poet Biography

★ LitWeb.net: Conrad Aiken Biography

★ Conrad Aiken's Grave in Savannah, Georgia