POETS AND POETRY.
MORE POEMS BY A LITTLE GIRL.
Mena CONKLIN°, the author of Poems by a Little Girl, must be, if we may judge from the photograph which is a frontispiece to her new volume, Shoes of the Wind, between twelve and sixteen years old. There is no doubt about her talent. She has a wonderful feeling for free rhythms and an extremely nice sense both of colour and form, her work in this respect reminding one of the Imagists. Perhaps, taking the bulk of her verse, one would say that her outlook is inclined to be a little sentimental. She will always find violets or snowdrops in the wood—never blowflies round a dead rabbit. Nobody wants a little girl to love the macabre, but an Henri Fabre would have seen the blowflies and either have been amazed or amused. This tendency towards a pretty fine world gives a certain sense of sugariness and magniloquence to her verse. She is on such friendly terms with star, mountain and river —one suspects perhaps a very sunny elder in. this slightly strained and tiptoe attitude of optimism. Yet some of her poems are very well worth having :— "The river waits for water From a feeding stream ; The little stream, winding, Runs on its way to pour itself
Into the dying river.
And the river lives again In the valley."
The Japanese picture would surely please younger children. extremely :— 0 Shoes of the Wind. By Hilda Colliding. London : Kamp and Co. [5s. net.:
"Trees on a marble island.
Birds with little brown backs— Is this Paradise Mountain of my heart
With pink and purple colouring, Little houses on the river bank— Houses made of maple sugar,
Distant tree. Boats with blue sails ; Japanese people in silk
Hidden in the brown-sugar houses ;
Yellow sky, pearl-coloured ground, River-ripples like the ripples in silk Or a windy cornfield ; Hills of pink opal
And dewy seas— Did you answer my question About Paradise?"
Perhaps as she grows older she will dare look at the blowflies : a poet should not takes sides even with stars and primroses. There is, or was, of course, a tendency to an undue sentimental
refinement in American culture. It produced the type of " glad " novel or poem ; it took part in " uplift " campaigns ; it was often the evil genius of American feminism. Let us hope that Miss Hilda Conkling, with her accomplishment and
sensibility, will finally escape it. A. wirmiAms_ELLTs.
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