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. The children and their
mother live all the year round in Northampton,
and glimpses of the woods and hills surrounding
the little town crop up again and again in these
poems.
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