[Aiken] was a poet essentially, but he was also the complete man of letters, distinguished for his work in many forms of verse and prose. The unity was there, however, and in every form he spoke with the same candid, scrupulous, self-deprecatory, yet reckless and fanciful New England voice. (p. 231)

[Candor] was close to being his central principle as a man and a writer, particularly as a poet. The principle evolved into a system of aesthetics and literary ethics that unified his work, a system based on the private and public value of self-revelation. No matter what sort of person the poet might be, healthy or neurotic, Aiken believed that his real business was "to give the low-down on himself, and through himself on humanity." (p. 233)

"Look within thyself to find the truth" might have been his Emersonian motto; and it had the corollary that inner truth corresponds...