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Margaret Widdemer
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I lived from 1884-1978.
I was from America, and am in the Americas category.
Margaret Widdemer was a poet and novelist whose work was much honoured during the first half of the 20th century. Among her many awards, and her honorary degrees, was the 1916 Columbia University Prize for poetry (the early Pulitzer, which she shared with Carl Sandburg). While she considered herself primarily a poet, she was more prolific as a writer of prose fiction: she wrote 32 novels during her long career.
Read full description by Sundance - Oldpoetry Team...
Though a native of Doylestown, PA., she spent her childhood off and on in Asbury Park, where her father was minister of the Congregational Church and her mother and aunt owners of a Hotel. She received her education entirely at home until she attended high school in Asbury Park.
Two of her works take as their setting local shore towns. "Why Not?" (1915) is a light romance novel whose story unfolds in "Wanalasset" and "The Boardwalk" (1919), which is a book of short stories that are set in "Asbury Park". "Why Not?" is about a spirited girl of 18 who has inherited $3000 from the strict great-uncle who raised her. Now that she's rich and free she can realise her dreams.
The nine stories of "The Boardwalk" follow the searching paths of young people --their loves, sorrows, joys and lifes revelations. Unlike the tourists, they live in "Asbury Park" as "year-rounders" through "the eight long village months you don't see." Margaret Widdemer wrote of The Boardwalk "It is not so very long as the Atlantic City one. But it is smooth and very wide and un-built on, and garlanded with lights and jewelled with light-traced casinos." One of the stories depicts ice skating on "Sunrise Lake."
Life in Asbury Park was a stimulus for Widdemer. Reportedly she stated that were it not for her having lived in this city, she might never have become a writer. Indeed, it is said that her first poem, written when she was four, was titled "Asbury Park Goldenrod."
In her book "Golden Friends I had" (1964) she tells of her social adventures as an author, detailing her friendship and encounters with noted writers (Edna Vincent Millay, Joyce Kilmer, Thornton Wilder, Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot, F. Scott Fitzgerald and others). Unfortunately, her work has not shared the same love and longevity as that of many of her past friends and acquaintances.
Margaret Widdemer died in 1976, in Gloversville, NY, at age 93.
Works by Margaret Widdemer
The old road to paradise
The singing wood
Being young
Womenfolk
People
Wistfulness
Love songs\
Thanks to 'Asbury Park Pres's for biography source
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