The Charity of Common Denomination

Conrad Aiken: A Life Of His Art by Jay Martin. Princeton University Press, $5.00.

It would never have been easy, not even when the corpus of Conrad Aiken’s work was much smaller than twenty-five books of verse, five novels, five collections of stories, and two books of criticism. Yet, in some ways, it is no harder now than it was in 1916 when The Jig of Forslin appeared. In his prefatory summary to that book, Aiken said: “My intention has been to employ all methods, attitudes, slants. . . . Consequently, it is possible to pick out portions of this poem to exemplify almost any poetic method or tone.” And, as if that were not enough, this motley poet developed an increasing interest in the defining of personality. His many modes merely fragmented the self further and even flaunted the disunity.