Aiken, << AY kuhn, >> Conrad Potter (1889-1973), was an American poet, novelist, and critic. He was a sympathetic ally of Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot, and others who used new methods in poetry. Aiken’s verse, however, is relatively conservative and deeply personal, and especially influenced by the Austrian psychiatrist Sigmund Freud. Aiken’s central poetic concern was the problem of achieving personal identity in an unstable world of change. The greatest strength of his poetry is its musicality, which often overwhelms the poem’s ideas. Aiken’s Selected Poems won the 1930 Pulitzer Prize for poetry.
Aiken was born on Aug. 5, 1889, in Savannah, Georgia, but grew up in New Bedford, Massachusetts. In addition to several novels and collections of stories and essays, Aiken wrote Ushant (1952), an autobiographical fantasy. This work provides an eloquent account of the writer’s development as an artist, despite personal setbacks and uncertainties. Aiken’s Collected Poems 1916-1970 was published in 1971. He died on Aug. 17, 1973.
