A poem by this poet

Conrad Aiken

1889-1973

Conrad Aiken was born in Savannah, GA, but, after the death of both parents in a tragic murder-suicide, Aiken was raised by a distant aunt in New England. He graduated Harvard in 1912. In 1914  when he was 25, Aiken’s first collection of poetry, Earth Triumphant, was published. In the wake of WWI, Aiken traveled extensively throughout Europe and was married three times. He won the Pulitzer Prize in 1930 for Selected Poems (1929) and went on to serve as the Poetry Consultant to the Library of Congress from 1950-52. He was both a practicing poet and a connoisseur of current and historical verse; for editing Emily Dickinson’s Selected Poems (1924), Aiken is regarded as being largely responsible for her posthumous establishment as a great figure in American poetry.