- Emily Dickinson was a renowned American poet born in 1830 in Massachusetts. She published few poems during her lifetime but left behind around 1,800 poems after her death. Her poems dealt with themes of love, nature, God and eternity in a simple yet profound style. - Carl Sandburg was a Swedish American poet born in 1878. He worked various jobs as a young man before becoming a journalist. He wrote poetry collections that celebrated American industrial life and the common worker. His works brought him fame and he became known as the "Poet of the Common Man." - The poems discussed reflect on themes of life, death, love and the human experience. Dickinson's "My Life Closed Twice

1. St. Louise de Marillac College of Sorsogon
Higher Education Department
S.Y: 2011-2012
Jushabeth G. Garcera
BSEd-III
EMILY DICKENSON (1830-1886)
 She is considered by many to be the one of the preeminent poets in the English
language.
 Only few of her poems were published.
 About 1,800 poems were discovered after her death, and most of them were
lyrics.
 Her poems are simple but underneath them currents with deep wisdom.
 Her poems pertain to personal experiences and adventures of the soul with
nature of love, God, time and eternity.
 Her technique in writing:
- She omitted conjunctions, and she cut and trimmed her sentences.
- Her verses are irregular in meter and rhyme.
- The lines are fragmentary but the impression she leaves is of startling
originality.
MY LIFE CLOSED TWICE
By Emily Dickenson
My life closed twice before its closed;
It yet remains to see
If immortality unwell
A third event to me,
So huge, so hopeless to conceive,
As these that twice befell.
Parting is all we know of heaven,
And all we need of hell.

2. CARL SANBURG
 A Swedish descent was born in Illinois.
 At age 13, he started of living doing variety of hard jobs.
 Worked as a newspaper reporter at Chicago, before he became a magazine and
newspaper editor.
 He wrote four volumes of a free verse poetry entitled “The Chicago Poems” about
industrial life of the Americans.
 He is known in the literary world as the Poet of the Common People – the toilers,
the aid worker, and the daily wage earner.
 He also wrote a three volume biography entitled “Abraham Lincoln, and the
Prairie Years.”
 In 1940, he received a Pulitzer award.
 His poem “Prayers of Steel” is about exceptional and incomparable desire toward
accomplishment and self-fulfillment.
PRAYERS OF STEEL
By Carl Sandburg
Lay me on the anvil, O God.
Bent me and hammer me into a crowbar
Let me pry loose old walls.
Let me lift and loosen old foundations.
Lay e on an anvil, O God.
Beat me and hammer me into a steel spike.
Drive me into the girders that hold
A skyscraper together
Take red-hot rivets and fasten me
Into the central girders.
Let me be the great nail holding a
Skyscraper through blue nights
Into white stars.

3. Emily Dickinson was born on 10 December 1830 generation is simply her poetic gift, something
in Amherst, in western Massachusetts, and died attributable more to nature and culture than to
there on 15 May 1886. Her parents were Edward some emotional trauma.
Dickinson (1803-1874) and Emily Norcross
Dickinson (1804-1882). The family included three We know much of Dickinson's life through her
children: Austin (1828-1895), Emily, and Lavinia correspondences. She maintained a lifelong
(1833-1899). Most of the family belonged to correspondence with Susan Dickinson, even though
the Congregational Church, though the poet herself they were next-door neighbors; this
never became a member. The Dickinsons were correspondence, preserved by Susan, is the source
well-off and well-educated. Both Edward and for many of the poet's manuscripts. But Emily
Austin were college graduates, leaders in the Dickinson also corresponded with school friends,
community and of Amherst College. Edward with her cousins Fanny and Loo Norcross, and with
Dickinson was a Whig (later a Republican) several people of letters, including Samuel Bowles,
representative to state and national legislatures. Dr. and Mrs. J.G. Holland, T.W. Higginson,
Emily had a strong secondary education and a year and Helen Hunt Jackson.
of college at South Hadley Female Seminary
The central events, then, of Dickinson's life are
(later Mount Holyoke College).
those that are central to the lives of most writers:
The poet was born in, and died in, a house she wrote. She compiled a manuscript record of
called the Homestead, built by her grandfather nearly 1,800 poems, along with many letters. In or
Samuel Fowler Dickinson in 1813. This house was around 1858 she began to keep manuscript books
sold out of the family, however, in 1833, and not of her poetry, the "fascicles," hand-produced and
re-purchased by Edward Dickinson till 1855; so hand-bound. In the early 1860s she produced
most of the poet's younger years were lived in hundreds of poems each year. In 1864 and 1865,
other houses. failing eyesight, which impelled her to make two
extended visits to Cambridge, Massachusetts for
After her years at school, Emily Dickinson lived in medical treatment, slowed her production of
the family home for the rest of her life. She cared manuscript books. But her production of
for her parents in their later years and was a manuscripts continued at a slower pace until her
companion to her sister Lavinia, who also stayed last illnesses in 1885-86.
"at home" for her entire life. Neither sister married.
The extended Dickinson family included Austin's Though she wrote hundreds of poems, Dickinson
wife Susan Huntington Gilbert, who lived for many never published a book of poetry. The few poems
years next door in the house called The Evergreens, published during her lifetime were anonymous
and Susan and Austin's three children. (see Publishing History). The reasons why she never
published are still unclear. A myth promoted
The myth, of course, is of Dickinson as a reclusive by William Luce's play The Belle of Amherst(1976) is
spinster-poet, brooding over a deep romantic that Higginson discouraged her writing; however, it
mystery in her past. The realities are more is probably not the case that Dickinson met with
mundane. Especially among relatively wealthy rejection from the literary world. For one thing,
families in 19th-century Massachusetts, it was far Higginson was instrumental in getting her poetry
from unusual for grown women simply to keep published soon after her death, suggesting that her
house as a primary occupation, neither marrying reluctance and not his disapproval was the barrier
nor working outside the home. The thing that sets to him doing this earlier. Also, both Bowles and
Dickinson apart from other women of her class and Hunt Jackson arranged for anonymous publication

4. of individual poems by Dickinson during the poet's get the poet to submit a volume of poems for
lifetime. At Hunt Jackson's suggestion, Thomas publication in 1883; she declined.
Niles of Roberts Brothers publishing house tried to
-shows the problem of dying. Sweden, where he met a cousin named Erik Carlson
and received from King Gustav VI a special medal
-She gives us the picture of the life of a person who for his achievements. Upon his return he was
has lost someone and was touched by the death of questioned by Federal authorities, who accused
people very close to her. him of supporting the Bolsheviks in Russia.
However, Sandburg was not a political thinker and
-Everything reminds her about death. Her life is full
he soon became the voice of men and ideals of the
of misery and she is afraid that she will die soon.
Midwestern.
Her soul “died” with the people that she loved. She
worries that nothing about her would remain after Sandburg's first major collection of poems,
the end of her life and the existence of her body. CHICAGO POEMS, appeared in 1916. It presented
-“Parting is all we know of heaven the poet as a loud-voiced, proud proletarian, full of
And all we need of hell”--- we know everything that joy of life. The book included the famous 'Chicago'
we need to know about hell. We know things that and 'Fog.' "Hog Butcher for the World, / Tool
are so awful. It is impossible to imagine that in a Maker, Stacker of Wheat, / Player with Railroads
different place there exist wars and cruel death, but and the Nation's Freight Handler; Stormy, husky,
in the world that is around us we must live and be brawling, City of the Big Shoulders.../" (from
happy. 'Chicago')Sandburg was too old to serve in the army
during World War I, but he went abroad to serve as
-“closing life” does not represent death but is the
a foreign correspondent. In CORNHUSKERS (1918)
symbol of lost love. For many people love is
Sandburg documented his war experiences. Upon
everything, especially when they are young and
his return, in 1919, he joined the staff of
believe in the strength and the power of love.
the Chicago Daily News for thirteen years. In his
Carl Sandburg was born in Galesburg, Illinois, the articles he dealt among others garment trades and
son of poor Swedish immigrant parents. His father in 1919 appeared another series of articles in THE
was August Sandburg, a blacksmith and railroad CHICAGO RACE RIOTS. His free verse, reflecting
worker, who had changed his name from Johnson. industrial America, gained wide popularity during
His mother was the former Clara Anderson. the Depression years, although his use of everyday
Sandburg was educated at public school until he language at first shocked readers. In the 1930s
was thirteen, and he then worked in odd jobs in Sandburg became active in the Socialist movement.
Illinois, Kansas, Nebraska, and Colorado. In 1898 he Interested in American folksongs, he published in
returned to his home town for a short time with 1927 a collection in THE AMERICAN SONGBAG and
the trade of house-painter. later NEW AMERICAN SONGBAG (1950). These
songs Sandburg had heard from railroad men,
In 1913 Sandburg moved with his family to a suburb cowboys, lumberjack, hobos, convicts and workers
of Chicago. He was employed as an editor of a on farm and in factory. Outside industrial cities was
business magazine, and published articles in the prairie, of which he wrote: "I was born on the
the International Socialist Review. His poems prairie, and the milk of its wheat, the red of its
started to appear in Harriet Monroe's (1860-1936) clover, the eyes of its women, gave me a song, a
magazine Poetry: A Magazine of Verse. The slogan."
Levinson Prize, awarded by Poetry in 1914,
established Sandburg as an important new figure in Between the wars Sandburg travelled widely as a
the literary scene. In 1918 Sandburg visited poetry-reciter, accompanying himself on a guitar,

5. wearing a blue working man's shirt and his white North Carolina, where Sandburg lived the rest of his
hair rumpled. On the lecture tours, his most life. During World War II he wrote a folksy
prominent competitor was Robert Frost, four years syndicated newspaper column for the Chicago
older than Sandburg. They met in 1917, Sandburg Times. From 1945 he lived as a writer and farmer,
called him "the strongest, loneliest, friendliest breeding goats and combining poetry reading with
personality among the poets today." The good- folk singing. In 1960, Sandburg earned $125,000 for
natured Sandburg remained his friend for nearly working as a creative consultant on a Hollywood
fifty years, in spite of Frost's constant attacks on his film, The Greatest Story Ever Told. Its production
person and his literary production. When Sandburg was postponed in 1961. "This picture will be
performed at Michigan, Frost said: "His mandolin made," Sandburg declared before returning to Flat
pleased some people, his poetry a very few and his Rock, "and it will be a great all-time picture."
infantile talk none." Eventually it was released in 1965, directed by
George Stevens and starring Max von Sydow.
THE PEOPLE, YES (1936) is probably Sandburg's Sandburg's surprising sojourn was not his first
most popular single book. From his very first experience with Hollywood: when he was a
volumes Sandburg recorded the speech of motion-picture critic for the Chicago Daily News, he
Midwesterners, spoken by the working class of the had done interviews with stars of the silent film.
industrial cities; this became a clear feature of his And D.W. Griffith had planned to produce a movie
poetry. It also showed the author's epigrammatic about Lincoln based on Sandburg's books, but
skills. Sandburg was often called the successor engaged Stephen Vincent Benét to write the
to Walt Whitman; the both writers shared an screeplay. At the age of sixty-five, Sandburg began
appreciation for the rhythms of the urban life and his first and only novel, REMEMBRANCE ROCK, an
admired common laborers, but they also had a kind epic saga of America, which appeared in 1948.
of shamanistic streak in their expression. Sandburg died on July 22, in 1967, at the age of 89.
He once said: "It could be, in the grace of God, I
Sandburg's life of Lincoln was published in six
shall live to be eighty-nine, as did Hokusai, and
volumes (1926-1939) and although historians have
speaking my farewell to earthly scenes, I might
criticized its mistakes, it has won admiration of
paraphrase: 'If God had let me live five years longer
most critics and was praised for its style and
I should have been a writer.'"
readability. Edmund Wilson's wisecrack in Patriotic
Gore (1962) is perhaps the most fierce attack on the
work: "The cruellest thing that has happened to
Lincoln since he was shot by Booth has been to fall
into the hands of Carl Sandburg." ABRAHAM
LINCOLN: THE WAR YEARS (1939, 4 vols.) won the
1940 Pulitzer Prize for history. It traced Lincoln's
career from the time of his departure for the White
House, to May 4, 1865. ABE LINCOLN GROWS UP
(1928) was written for young readers, and was
drawn from THE PRAIRIE YEARS (1926). Sandburg's
autobiographical works include ALWAYS THE
YOUNG STRANGERS (1953) and EVER THE WINDS
OF CHANGE (1983).
In 1928 Sandburg moved to Harbert, Michigan, and
in 1943, seeking a milder climate, the family moved
again, this time to Connemara, a farm in Flat Rock,