A Little Girl Lost, by William Blake

František Kupka - The little girl with a ball
František Kupka – The little girl with a ball (1908)

The visionary poet and painter William Blake (b. 28 November 1757, d. 12 August 1827) went largely unrecognised during his lifetime, but he is now considered a seminal figure in the history of the poetry and visual arts of the Romantic Age. In the poem “A Little Girl Lost” published in Songs of Experience (1794), he envisages a future where children and adolescents will freely enjoy nudity and love, and the religious condemnation of these pleasures will cause indignation. He would have been dismayed to notice that 225 years after publishing that poem, things have not much progressed in the Anglo-Saxon world. CONTINUE READING / CONTINUER LA LECTURE…

Rose-Moss, by Hilda Conkling

Hilda Conkling, Poems By A Little Girl
Cover by Charles Churchward, Illustration by Dorothy P. Lathrop – Hilda Conkling, Poems By A Little Girl, Vinyl LP Album, Caedmon Records, Inc., TC 1387 (1972)

The child poet composed this charming little poem at age five or six, and her mother wrote it down. It was published in 1920 in her first collection Poems by a Little Girl. Hilda shows her empathy for nature, wondering if an isolated flower feels lonely, but fortunatly it does not. CONTINUE READING / CONTINUER LA LECTURE…

Nathalia Crane at twelve

Nathalia Crane
Nathalia Crane (c.1925)

In 1925, Nathalia Crane published her second volume of poetry, Lava Lane, and Other Poems, just one year after her first one, The Janitor’s boy, and Other Poems. In it she airs her sophistication, mastering poetical language, as well as scientific and technical vocabulary from several disciplines, such as botany, geology and even embryology (using the word “blastoderm” about a boy she seems to despise); she also refers to various religions and to characters from Greek mythology. Furthermore, she shows her understanding of human relations, including in some of their intimate aspects. CONTINUE READING / CONTINUER LA LECTURE…

Jealousy, by Nathalia Crane

Keystone/Getty Images - Chinese schoolchildren
Keystone/Getty Images – Chinese schoolchildren give a demonstration of their military skills in Hanking, where lessons include pre-military exercises using wooden weapons (April 1, 1974)

In this humorous little piece, Nathalia imagines organising a brigade of little girls in charge of watching their fathers and preventing their seduction by beautiful young women. Here Flatbush is a neighbourhood of Brooklyn in New York City. CONTINUE READING / CONTINUER LA LECTURE…