Aiken, though neglected today and largely unappreciated during his lifetime, is one
of the most significant figures in the development of American Modernism. Aiken
enrolled at Harvard in 1907, thus qualifying him as a member of one of the famous
classes of 1910-1915 which included T.S. Eliot, E.E. Cummings, John Reed, Robert
Benchley, and Walter Lippmann. Leaving Harvard in his senior year, Aiken embarked on
the first of several trips to Europe. There he met Ezra Pound and Amy Lowell who
were then launching the Imagist movement. Soon after his graduation, Aiken moved to
Europe and began writing and reviewing for New
Republic , Poetry , Dial , and other periodicals. By 1925, he was settled in Boston and well
into a writing career that produced more than 50 books of poetry, fiction, and
criticism.
