The story of Conrad Potter Aiken (August 5, 1889 – August 17, 1973) reads like something from a Gothic novel, yet it is the true foundation upon which one of twentieth-century America's most psychologically complex poets built his life and work. Born into comfortable circumstances in Savannah, Georgia, Aiken seemed destined for the privileged life his family background suggested. His father, William Ford Aiken, had s…
“For magic is itself a changing thing. The sparrow of today is the phoenix of tomorrow, and vice versa.”
Neighbourhood:
American Poets, Death & Mortality, Modernist Poets, Symbolist Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Longing, Tenderness
On a warm August morning in 1841, in the quiet Staffordshire village of Caverswall, Robert Williams Buchanan was born on August 18. He entered a world already marked by ideological fervor and social upheaval, for his father, Robert Buchanan senior, was no ordinary parent but a passionate advocate of Robert Owen's socialist schemes, traveling the country as an itinerant lecturer preaching cooperation and radical socia…
“I, on the other hand, am a dreamer, a whiner after the Unknown and Unknowable. I was ‘built that way.”
Neighbourhood:
Love Poets, Pre-Raphaelite Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Despair, Longing
