Miss Widdemer’s poetic work has two distinct phases. In the one mood, she is the protesting poet, the champion of the down-trodden, the lyricist on fire with angry passion. In the other, she is the writer of well-made, polite and popular sentimental verse. Her finest poems are in Factories with Other Lyrics (1915), although several of her best songs are in The Old Road to Paradise (1918), which divided, with Sandburg’s Cornhuskers, the Columbia Poetry Prize in 1918.
Miss Widdemer is also the author of two books of short stories, four novels and several books for girls.
FACTORIES
I have shut my little sister in from life and light
(For a rose, for a ribbon, for a wreath across my hair),
I have made her restless feet still until the night,
Locked from sweets of summer and from wild spring air;
I who ranged the meadowlands, free from sun to sun,
Free to sing and pull the buds and watch the far wings fly,
I have bound my sister till her playing time was done—