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Selected Poems
Poet, short story writer, critic and novelist, Conrad Aiken (1889-1973) has been called the most metaphysical, the most learned, and the most modern of poets. With writing that reflects an intense interest in psychological, philosophical, and scientific issues, Aiken remains a unique influence upon modern writers and critics today. In his lifetime, Aiken received many awards including the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1930 and the National Book Award for Poetry in 1954. He served as the Consultant in Poetry at the Library of Congress from 1950-1952.
Selected Poems contains Aiken's own choice of the best and most representative of his poems, spanning more than forty years of his work. Harold Bloom has contributed a new Foreword to reintroduce Aiken to a new generation of readers. The inclusion of several pivotal poems from previous editions broadens the scope of the work to represent Aiken's legacy.
Selected Poems contains Aiken's own choice of the best and most representative of his poems, spanning more than forty years of his work. Harold Bloom has contributed a new Foreword to reintroduce Aiken to a new generation of readers. The inclusion of several pivotal poems from previous editions broadens the scope of the work to represent Aiken's legacy.
320 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1928
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About the author
Conrad Aiken
303 books81 followersKnown American writer Conrad Potter Aiken won a Pulitzer Prize of 1930 for
Selected Poems
.
Most of work of this short story critic and novelist reflects his intense interest in psychoanalysis and the development of identity. As editor of Selected Poems of Emily Elizabeth Dickinson in 1924, he largely responsibly established her posthumous literary reputation. From the 1920s, Aiken divided his life between England and the United States and played a significant role in introducing American poets to the British audience.
He fathered gifted writers Joan Aiken and Jane Aiken Hodge.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conrad_...
Most of work of this short story critic and novelist reflects his intense interest in psychoanalysis and the development of identity. As editor of Selected Poems of Emily Elizabeth Dickinson in 1924, he largely responsibly established her posthumous literary reputation. From the 1920s, Aiken divided his life between England and the United States and played a significant role in introducing American poets to the British audience.
He fathered gifted writers Joan Aiken and Jane Aiken Hodge.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conrad_...
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
August 11, 2008
It is easier to quote a poet than review him. That is particularly true of Conrad Aiken, beloved mystic bard and cosmos mariner. He began and ended his days in Savannah, Georgia, where his remains are buried in the Bonaventure Cemetery. Here is a sample of his work, from the poem Time in the Rock or Preludes to Definition:
XII
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.
And the other cricket said to the first -
fool! fool! speak! speak! speak!
speak if you must, but speaking speaking speaking
what does it get us, what does it get us, what?
act act act act give
giving is love, giving is love, give!
One cricket said to another =
what is love what is love what is love -
act - speak - act - speak - act - speak -
give - take - give - take - give - take -
more slowly as the autumn comes, but giving
and taking still, - you taking, and I giving?
And the other cricket said to the first -
yes! yes! yes! you give your word!
words words but what at the end are words
speech speech what is the use of speech
give me love give me love
love!
One cricket said to another -
in the beginning - I forget - in the beginning -
food food food food food
too late to remember and too late to teach -
in the beginning was the word, the speech,
and in the end the word, the word, the word . . .
But while they quarrelled, these two foolish crickets,
and bandied act with word, denying each,
weighing their actions out in terms of speech,
the frost came whitely down and furred them both,
the speech grew slower, and the action nil,
and, at the end, even the word was still,
and god began again.
XII
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.
And the other cricket said to the first -
fool! fool! speak! speak! speak!
speak if you must, but speaking speaking speaking
what does it get us, what does it get us, what?
act act act act give
giving is love, giving is love, give!
One cricket said to another =
what is love what is love what is love -
act - speak - act - speak - act - speak -
give - take - give - take - give - take -
more slowly as the autumn comes, but giving
and taking still, - you taking, and I giving?
And the other cricket said to the first -
yes! yes! yes! you give your word!
words words but what at the end are words
speech speech what is the use of speech
give me love give me love
love!
One cricket said to another -
in the beginning - I forget - in the beginning -
food food food food food
too late to remember and too late to teach -
in the beginning was the word, the speech,
and in the end the word, the word, the word . . .
But while they quarrelled, these two foolish crickets,
and bandied act with word, denying each,
weighing their actions out in terms of speech,
the frost came whitely down and furred them both,
the speech grew slower, and the action nil,
and, at the end, even the word was still,
and god began again.
June 30, 2021
A sample of Aiken’s “musical symbolism,” “studies in stream of consciousness,” “black-and-white impressionism,” and dark humor spoken by a shadowy, psychologically damaged narrator expounding the throbs and sobs of his “vascular jukebox”:
“Order in all things, logic in the dark;
Arrangement in the atom and the spark;
Time in the heart and sequence in the brain—
Such as destroyed Rimbaud and fooled Verlaine.
And let us then take godhead by the neck—
And strangle it, and with it, rhetoric.”
—“Preludes for Memnon”
Favorite Poems:
“Preludes for Memnon”
“Summer”
“Herman Melville”
“Morning Dialogue”
“Order in all things, logic in the dark;
Arrangement in the atom and the spark;
Time in the heart and sequence in the brain—
Such as destroyed Rimbaud and fooled Verlaine.
And let us then take godhead by the neck—
And strangle it, and with it, rhetoric.”
—“Preludes for Memnon”
Favorite Poems:
“Preludes for Memnon”
“Summer”
“Herman Melville”
“Morning Dialogue”
October 16, 2021
"Seperate we come, separate go,
and this be it known is all that we know."
and this be it known is all that we know."
May 21, 2022
the first poet I ever loved :’)
December 8, 2023
Mėgstu Aikeną. Jis - irgi iš mano favoritų sąrašo. Neretai jį deklamuojuosi gulėdamas aukštielninkas ant savo ortopedinio matraco. Man patinka jo ryšys su senosios poezijos formomis, nors, pasak kritikų, būtent dėl to jis netapo populiarus savo metu. Žavi jo specifinis melodingumas (nors autorius ir nerimuoja). Parklupdo galingos metaforos, kai kuriuos skaitytojus, ieškančius poezijoje švelnios paguodos, varančios, ko gero, į neviltį: "Alone upon the brown sad edge of chaos, / In the wan evening that was evening always". Arba: "The waters of the human soul are deep. / We are the rocks that rot above those waters. / We are the rocks on whom the times have written. / We, the recorded sadness of the world." Bet labai svarbu ir kitkas. Pavyzdžiui, gėriuosi, kaip A. sūpuojasi tarp archetipinių vaizdinių, glūdinčių sąmonėje, ir tarsi konkrečių vaizdų, regimų čia ir dabar, o tu nežinai, kuris yra kuris: "Winter for a moment takes the mind; the snow / Falls past the arclight; icicles guard a wall; /.../ ". O toliau: "Only for a moment; as spring too might engage it, / With a single crocus in the loam, or a pair of birds; /.../ ". Ir dar toliau: "The mind too has its snows, its slippery paths, / Walls bayonetted with ice, leaves ice-encased." O Aikeno metafiziškumas! Kartkarčiais jo eilėraščiuose pasirodo Dievas (labai nepanašus į gerąjį senelį). Bet dažniau (kaip metafizinė jėga) - chaosas. Ir, o stebukle, chaosas ne tik griauna, naikina, bet ir kuria! Negana to - net bemaž miršta, kad rastųsi daiktas: "Then I saw / How order might - if chaos wished - become: / And saw the darkness crush upon itself, / Contracting powerfully; it was if / It killed itself: slowly: and with much pain. / Pain. The scene was pain, and nothing but pain. / What else, when chaos draws all forces inward / To shape a single leaf? . . ." Labai man prie širdies Conradas Aikenas. Deklamuosiuosi jį ir toliau. Žinoma, kol galutinai neišbluks mano atminties raštai...
December 3, 2025
This version of the book has many typos and printing issues.
But despite that, love Aiken, he definitely runs his hand over the same theme until it's exhausted but that's part of his style.
But despite that, love Aiken, he definitely runs his hand over the same theme until it's exhausted but that's part of his style.
September 29, 2014
Conrad Aiken is a major American poet who received numerous awards. I have to admit, also, that he would have been a total obscurity to me if not for Harold Bloom’s forceful recommendation of his genius. His poetry is heavy and musical. A reader of this collection is immediately greeted by “Palimsest: The Deceitful Portrait” and my favorite poem. Symbolic, thoughtful, beautiful, melancholy, and musical are the words that begin to describe the poem, which I shall not criticize. I suspect many would describe Aiken’s poetry in general the same way.
Aiken himself led a difficult life. His father committed a murder-suicide against his mother, and preoccupations with psychology in his poetry can only be linked to such a personal trauma in his youth. He was surrounded by Santayana, Eliot, and other major authors. His poetry is honest, in that it frequently autobiographical connects his language to his self-doubt (which was so severe that it led to at least one attempted suicide).
His most famous poems are the two Preludes. Preludes to Memnon contain many passages that are quite brilliant.
--I saw myself and God.
I saw the ruin in which godhead lives:
Shapeless and vast: the strewn wreck of the world:
Sadness unplumbed: misery without bound.
Wailing I heard, but also I heard joy.
Wreckage I saw, but also I saw flowers.
Hatred I saw, but also I saw love . . .
And thus, I saw myself. (122)
Why, something new;
Such sport of nature as deforms a leaf
Or gives the toad a wing. Thus we find
The afternoon, for all its honeyed light
On gilded lawns, is monstrous grown, profound
Induction to such hell as Blake himself
Had never guessed. Suddenly comes the Queen
Dressed like a playing-card; a wind of fear
Flutters the courtiers; and the garden strewn
With the blown wreckage of our flimsy world.
And the poor king, bewildered, stops his heart
On the loud note of doubt. (136)
Walk man on the stage of our own imagining
peel an orange or dust your shoe, take from your pocket
the soiled handkerchief and blow your ose
as if it were indeed necessary to be natural
and speak too if an idea should recommend itself
speak to the large bright imaginary audience
that flattering multiplication of yourself
so handsomely deployed and so expectant
tell them between flingings of orange peel
or such other necessary details of your role
precisely what they are, or what you are
since—lamentably—they are so much the same thing.
Decrepit inheritor of the initial star!
do you yourself sometimes imagine
or even perhaps say to that peculiar audience
something of this? As that yourself and they
comprise one statement? Supercilious
the actor may be, often is, to those who hear him
but to be supericilious to one’s self
even in one’s dramatic moments!—marvellous
decay of what in God’s first declaration
might have been good. (173)
The Preludes deal in general with “fundamental linguistic and epistemological problems” and my favorite lines from this collection overall also hint likewise in “The Sound of Breaking”:
It is a sound
Of everlasting grief, the sound of weeping,
The sound of disaster and misery, the sound
Of passionate heartbreak at the centre of the world. (60)
No one would read Aiken for diversion, or to escape the doldrums or difficulties of the world into some lighthearted fantasy. His poetry is very real, often sad, and always difficult and beautiful.
Aiken himself led a difficult life. His father committed a murder-suicide against his mother, and preoccupations with psychology in his poetry can only be linked to such a personal trauma in his youth. He was surrounded by Santayana, Eliot, and other major authors. His poetry is honest, in that it frequently autobiographical connects his language to his self-doubt (which was so severe that it led to at least one attempted suicide).
His most famous poems are the two Preludes. Preludes to Memnon contain many passages that are quite brilliant.
--I saw myself and God.
I saw the ruin in which godhead lives:
Shapeless and vast: the strewn wreck of the world:
Sadness unplumbed: misery without bound.
Wailing I heard, but also I heard joy.
Wreckage I saw, but also I saw flowers.
Hatred I saw, but also I saw love . . .
And thus, I saw myself. (122)
Why, something new;
Such sport of nature as deforms a leaf
Or gives the toad a wing. Thus we find
The afternoon, for all its honeyed light
On gilded lawns, is monstrous grown, profound
Induction to such hell as Blake himself
Had never guessed. Suddenly comes the Queen
Dressed like a playing-card; a wind of fear
Flutters the courtiers; and the garden strewn
With the blown wreckage of our flimsy world.
And the poor king, bewildered, stops his heart
On the loud note of doubt. (136)
Walk man on the stage of our own imagining
peel an orange or dust your shoe, take from your pocket
the soiled handkerchief and blow your ose
as if it were indeed necessary to be natural
and speak too if an idea should recommend itself
speak to the large bright imaginary audience
that flattering multiplication of yourself
so handsomely deployed and so expectant
tell them between flingings of orange peel
or such other necessary details of your role
precisely what they are, or what you are
since—lamentably—they are so much the same thing.
Decrepit inheritor of the initial star!
do you yourself sometimes imagine
or even perhaps say to that peculiar audience
something of this? As that yourself and they
comprise one statement? Supercilious
the actor may be, often is, to those who hear him
but to be supericilious to one’s self
even in one’s dramatic moments!—marvellous
decay of what in God’s first declaration
might have been good. (173)
The Preludes deal in general with “fundamental linguistic and epistemological problems” and my favorite lines from this collection overall also hint likewise in “The Sound of Breaking”:
It is a sound
Of everlasting grief, the sound of weeping,
The sound of disaster and misery, the sound
Of passionate heartbreak at the centre of the world. (60)
No one would read Aiken for diversion, or to escape the doldrums or difficulties of the world into some lighthearted fantasy. His poetry is very real, often sad, and always difficult and beautiful.
December 3, 2024
Conrad Aiken is, sadly, a forgotten relic of the early to mid 20th century Modernist poetry scene. A contemporary figure of T.S. Eliot and Wallace Stevens, he has not enjoyed the reputation and enduring love that they, and more, of that generation have. However, his poems are often just as good, and sometimes more.
The main reason I decided upon reading this book was pure luck. It was part of a 20th century poetry PDF bundle I had downloaded over a decade ago, but upon reading it, I was greeted by a bevy of poetry, often long, that looked at the world with a different eye than I could even imagine. Aiken has a command of language and meter with which he uses words to push past meaning and get at reality through metaphors and symbols that, quite frankly, no one aside from Wallace Stevens has even attempted in American, or even Anglo-American poetry.
Reading Aiken was a joy that still aches within me. I hope one day his posthumous star will shine and he will be remembered for the giant he is.
The main reason I decided upon reading this book was pure luck. It was part of a 20th century poetry PDF bundle I had downloaded over a decade ago, but upon reading it, I was greeted by a bevy of poetry, often long, that looked at the world with a different eye than I could even imagine. Aiken has a command of language and meter with which he uses words to push past meaning and get at reality through metaphors and symbols that, quite frankly, no one aside from Wallace Stevens has even attempted in American, or even Anglo-American poetry.
Reading Aiken was a joy that still aches within me. I hope one day his posthumous star will shine and he will be remembered for the giant he is.
July 6, 2019
Ahem. Look, I know there was a time in the literary circle when obscurity prevailed over meaning and the most incomprehensible gibberish was admired for clarity of concept… But I don’t buy it. (Try to complete The Coming Forth by Day of Osiris Jones.) I am not impressed by all the awards Aiken had received for his writing. Look at the crap that passes for brilliance today! He should be relegated to a shelf labeled ‘Mediocrity 1930 through 1950’ and join Stein, Lindsay, West, Stead and Mencken in the dust and cobwebs. What DO I like about Aiken? That he had lived in a most beautiful city: Savanah, Georgia.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews