Conrad Potter Aiken, Poet Laureate

 

Conrad Potter Aiken (1889 –1973) was an American writer and poet, honored with a Pulitzer Prize and a National Book Award. He was the United States Poet Laureate from 1950 to 1952. He was born in Savannah, Georgia which is also where he died in 1973.

His father, William Ford Aiken, was a physician from New York City. His mother, Anna Aiken, was the daughter of the Unitarian preacher William James Potter of New Bedford, Massachusetts.

Tragedy befell Conrad when he was 2 years old. His father, Will Aiken, killed his wife Anna and himself on 27 February 1901. Conrad's younger sister and two brothers were adopted by Frederick Winslow Taylor, the inventor of "scientific management", but Conrad went to live with his aunt Grace Aiken Tillinghast who lived in Cambridge with her husband, a Harvard librarian.

After Peabody Grammar School and Middlesex Academy, Conrad entered Harvard in 1907. He planned his career as a poet. At Harvard, he became friends with T.S. Eliot. Together they edited The Harvard Advocate. For mutual criticism, they exchanged their works in progress until 1916.

Conrad was a versatile writer. He produced poetry, short stories, novels, literary criticism, a play, and an autobiography. F.C. Bonnell's Conrad Aiken, a Bibliography (1902-1978) lists 64 "books and pamphlets" produced by Aiken, as well as 93 "contributions to books" and 761 "contributions to periodicals."