Aiken, Conrad (Vol. 3) - Aiken, Conrad 1889–1973
Aiken, Conrad 1889–1973
Aiken, whom Allen Tate called "one of the few genuine men of letters left," shared the concerns of the Moderns as a novelist, short story writer, and "unfashionable" poet. The "Preludes" are regarded as his greatest poetic achievement, and he is recognized as one of the most perceptive critics of modern poetry. (See also Contemporary Authors, Vols. 5-8, rev. ed.)
The accomplished body of Conrad Aiken's work—which has been at once respected and neglected—is something you read with consistent pleasure, but without the astonished joy that you feel for the finest poetry, which is always extraordinary. It is peculiarly hard to say what is lacking in Aiken's work, since he has written poems that come as close to being good poems, without ever quite being so, as any I know….
He is a kind of Midas: everything that he touches turns to verse; so that reading his poems is like listening to Delius—one is...
[The entire page is 3446 words long]
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