Poems By a Little Girl

From the opening

A book which needs to be written is one dealing with the childhood of authors. It would be not only interesting, but instructive; not merely profitable in a general way, but practical in a particular. We might hope, in reading it, to gain some sort of knowledge as to what environments and conditions are most conducive to the growth of the creative faculty. We might even learn how not to strangle this rare faculty in its early years.

At this moment I am faced with a difficult task, for here is an author and her childhood in a most unusual position; these two conditions--that of being an author, and that of being a child--appear simultaneously, instead of in the due order to which we are accustomed. For I wish at the outset to state, and emphatically, that it is poetry, the stuff and essence of poetry, which this book contains. I know of no other instance in which such really beautiful poetry has been written by a child; but, confronted with so unwonted a state of things, two questions obtrude themselves: how far has the condition of childhood been impaired by, not only the possession, but the expression, of the gift of writing; how far has the condition of authorship (at least in its more mature state still to come) been hampered by this early leap into the light?

The first question concerns the little girl and can best be answered by herself some twenty years hence; the second concerns the world, and again the answer must wait. We can, however, do something--we can see what she is and what she has done. And if the one is interesting to the psychologist, the other is no less important to the poet.

Hilda Conkling is the younger daughter of Mrs. Grace Hazard Conkling, Assistant Professor of English at Smith College, Northampton, Massachusetts. At the time of writing, Hilda has just passed her ninth birthday. Her sister, Elsa, is two years her senior.

A short sample. Read the whole book

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