Naming Senlin

I took the name "Senlin" from a poem by Conrad Aiken, who, notably was the US Poet Laureate from 1950 to 1952. Aiken was an interesting man whose work and life are worthy of study. I was researching his work around the same time I began to draft the Books of Babel, and I happened upon his poem, "Morning Song of Senlin."

I'm not sure exactly what I found so appealing about the name. It might've been the sibilance of it, especially in the context of the poem, which made it sound like a secret been lisped into a confidant's ear, or it might have been the personality of the namesake, who struck me as pensive, prim, hesitant, and intelligent.

These were the same characteristics I wanted for my protagonist, who I was calling something else entirely at the time... I think it was Lewis-something-or-other. My friend Nick recommended the first name Thomas, and so Thomas Senlin was born.

Coincidentally, the title of one of my favorite childhood books, "A Swiftly Tilting Planet" by Madeleine L'Engle, was taken from this same poem. Here's the opening stanza:

"It is morning, Senlin says, and in the morning
When the light drips through the shutters like the dew,
I arise, I face the sunrise,
And do the things my feathers learned to do.
Stars in the purple dusk above the rooftops
Pale in a saffron mist and seem to die,
And I myself on a swiftly tilting planet
Stand before a glass and tie my tie."