In 1889 Conrad Aiken was born to parents of Scottish descent in Savannah, Georgia. In 1901, when he was eleven years old, Aiken's father, killed his wife and then committed suicide. Aiken lived with an aunt in New Bedford, Massachusetts, until he entered Harvard University in 1907. There, he studied with George Santayana, a renowned philosopher and poet. Santayana's philosophy emphasized the utility of human sensory perception and reason. This aesthetic reaction to the world also emerges in Aiken's own poetry and fiction.

Aiken wrote steadily in many genres, but preferred writing poetry and short stories. He also wrote several novels, including The Blue Voyage (1927), Great Circle (1933), King Coffin (1935), and A Heart of the Gods for Mexico (1939).

Aiken's poetry ranges from short lyrics to extended "symphonies," as he called them, to morestraightforward verse narratives. He received the Pulitzer Prize for his Selected Poems (1929) and a National Book Award for...