SOURCE: "The Unconquerable Ancestors: 'Mayflower,' 'The Kid,' 'Hallowe'en'," in Studies in the Literary Imagination, Vol. XIII, No. 2, Fall, 1980, pp. 51-62.

In the following essay, Marten looks at three of Aiken's poems written in the 1940s after the poet had returned to the U.S. from England and contends that through these poems Aiken succeeded in "rediscovering" and accepting his connections with his homeland and his past.

"Do you really feel at home here?"¹ For years Conrad Aiken faced this discomforting question as an American living in Rye, England. But when war in Europe compelled his return to America in 1939, the question, turning suddenly inside-out, became even more disconcerting. Was Aiken at home as an American in America after years abroad? As he tells it, what steered his imagination during this time of dislocation was the heightened sense of ancestry which accompanied his return to New England...