(from Dr Ian Kluge's biography)

Aiken, Conrad (1889-1973)


American poet, short-story writer and novelist, Aiken was born in Savannah, Georgia and educated at Harvard at the same time as T.S. Eliot and Walter Lippmann. He was mostly interested in psychology and his reading of Freud, William James and the French Symbolists. He won the Pulitzer Prize with Selected Poems (1929) and among many other works, Scepticisms, Notes on Contemporary Poetry (1919). He would also have, later, an important influence on Malcolm Lowry, especially through his Ushant. John Cowper met him in New York in the thirties and mentions him rather favourably:
Here too was Conrad Aiken, very friendly. I talked too freely, made them laugh but at me rather than with me.... I was teased and taunted in my mind at having made a fool of myself, showing- off like that — and talking too much besides — they all laughed as if I were an ass. (The Diary of John Cowper Powys, 1930)
In 1923, John Cowper had mentioned to Llewelyn:
Did you happen to note in a book called 'scepticisms' by Conrad Aitken (sic) a very derisive reference to my poetical works? (Letters to his Brother Llewelyn, February 1923)