21–968
A series of poems defining the delicate shadings of sense perceptions. They correspond to the so-called “tone poems” of music. Among the titles given to individual pieces are: The fulfilled dream; Interlude; Nightmare; Retrospect; The box with silver handles; Haunted chambers; Porcelain; Clairvoyant. Parts of the book have appeared in the North American Review, Others, Poetry, Youth, Coterie and the Yale Review.
“Mr Aiken possesses many poetical merits. He has a flow of language that is refreshing in this age of meagrely trickling springs. He has vivid sensations and a felicitous ease in exactly expressing them. But he has the defects of his qualities. His facility is his undoing; for he is content to go on pouring out melodious language—content to go on linking image to bright image almost indefinitely. One begins to long for clarity and firmness, for a glimpse of something definite outside this golden haze.” A. L. H.
+ − Ath p235 Ag 20 ’20 440w Nation 112:86 Ja 19 ’21 100w
“He is not easy to understand, and some minds would doubt whether a drift of phenomena so irrational as this, however delicately and imaginatively it is described, can be worth describing, except from the point of view of scientific interest. That Mr Aiken’s work is both delicate and imaginative, there is no question.”
+ − The Times [London] Lit Sup p554 Ag 26 ’20 170w
AIKEN, CONRAD POTTER. Scepticisms; notes on contemporary poetry. *$2 (3c) Knopf 809.1
19–17334
For descriptive note see Annual for 1919.