Conrad Aiken
Conrad Aiken
Conrad Potter Aikenwas an American writer, whose work includes poetry, short stories, novels, a play, and an autobiography...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth5 August 1889
CitySavannah, GA
CountryUnited States of America
book short-story book-review
I began by doing book reviews on the typewriter and then went over to short stories on the machine, meanwhile sticking to pencil for poetry.
memories writing always-trying
It is precisely the sort of thing I am always trying to do in my writing -- to present my unhappy reader with a wide-ranged chaos -- of actions and reactions, thoughts, memories and feelings -- in the vain hope that at the end he will see that the whole thing represents only one moment, one feeling, one person. A raging, trumpeting jungle of associations, and then I announce at the end of it, with a gesture of despair, "This is I!
sweet sky forever
O sweet clean earth, from whom the green blade cometh! When we are dead, my best beloved and I, close well above us, that we may rest forever, sending up grass and blossoms to the sky.
mean writing exercise
I compelled myself all through to write an exercise in verse, in a different form, every day of the year. I turned out my page every day, of some sort--I mean I didn't give a damn about the meaning, I just wanted to master the form--all the way from free verse, Walt Whitman, to the most elaborate of villanelles and ballad forms. Very good training. I've always told everybody who has ever come to me that I thought that was the first thing to do.
reading students
I'm afraid I wasn't much of a student, but my casual reading was enormous.
music enchantment concerts
[At a musical concert:] . . . the music's pure algebra of enchantment.
lovely pennies youth
All lovely things will have an ending, all lovely things will fade and die; and youth, that's now so bravely spending, Will beg a penny by and by.
moving sleep snow
The hiss was now becoming a roar - the whole world was a vast moving screen of snow - but even now it said peace, it said remoteness, it said cold, it said sleep.
divide footsteps low shadows voices
And the shadows of tree-trunks and shadows of leavesInterlace with low voices and footsteps and sunlightTo divide us forever.
divide footsteps leaves low shadows sunlight voices
And the shadows of tree-trunks and shadows of leaves Interlace with low voices and footsteps and sunlight To divide us forever.
men office done
As poetry is the highest speech of man, it can not only accept and contain, but in the end express best everything in the world, or in himself, that he discovers. It will absorb and transmute, as it always has done, and glorify, all that we can know. This has always been, and always will be, poetry's office.
love hate ridiculous
One cricket said to another - come, let us be ridiculous, and say love! love love love love love let us be absurd, woman, and say hate! hate hate hate hate hate and then let us be angelic and say nothing.
life song knives
Life is the thing--the song of life-- The eager plow, the thirsty knife!
thinking years profound
Whitman had a profound influence on me. That was during my sophomore year when I came down with a bad attack of Whitmanitis. But he did me a lot of good, and I think the influence is discoverable.