It's time to make love, douse the glim; The fireflies twinkle and dim; The stars lean together Like birds of a feather, And the loin lies down with the limb.
Conrad AikenI think it's very useful to be insulated from your surrounds, because it gives you your inviolate privacy, without pressures, so that you can just be yourself.
Conrad AikenI think that what's happening today, with all the young poets rushing from one college to another, lecturing at the drop of a hat and so on, is not too good; I think it might have a bad effect on a great many of the young poets. They - to quote Mark Twain - "swap juices" a little too much, so that they are in danger of losing their own identity and don't give themselves time enough in which to work out what's really of importance to them - they're too busy.
Conrad AikenI think we've come to a kind of splinter period in poetry. These tiny little bright fragments of observation - and not produced under sufficient pressure - some of it's very skillful, but I don't think there's anywhere a discernible major poet in the process of emerging; or if he is, I ain't seen him.
Conrad Aiken