3/25/2021 0 Comments The New Colossus Poem
She was educated in Latin, Greek, and German by private tutors.The poem was written by the American-Jewish poet Emma Lazarus, as a donation to an auction of art and literary works intended to raise money to build a pedestal for the colossal statue just given by France to the United StatesOf Liberty Enlightening the World, as the Statue of Liberty was originally named.
Initially Lazarus was not interested in contributing a poem, but a friend convinced her that the statue would be of great significance to immigrants sailing into the harbor. But Emma Lazarus, in the 1880s, was deeply engaged in advocating for the flood of destitute Jewish immigrants fleeing anti-Semitic violence in Russia and throughout Eastern Europe, and so she wrote a poem that succeeded, surely beyond her wildest dreams, in changing the meaning of the statue and the meaning of the United States of America. But in 1903, a plaque bearing the text of the poem was mounted on the inner wall of the statues pedestal. It claims that we represent not war and conquest but freedom, enlightenment, and compassion. The brazen giant of Greek fame was the Colossus of Rhodes, once one of the Seven Wonders of the World. Im thinking of Benjamin Franklins experiments with electricity here. Naming this woman Mother of Exiles, calling her eyes mild yet commanding, and announcing that she stands for worldwide welcome is a stroke of radical insight into what America was and could become. And the words Lazarus has this figure cry with silent lips still bring tears to my own eyes, tears of admiration and gratitude. All my grandparents came to this country in the 1880s, at just the moment that inspired the poem. They were escaping poverty and pogroms. For them the rejection of the old world of monarchy, aristocracy, tyranny, and the dream of a new world of freedom and safety, came true. I was taught this dream by my parents, taught that I should be proud of being American, not because we were the greatest, whatever that means, but because we were the melting pot. We were the land where prejudice and hatred might one day be eliminated. Of course, there exist Americans whose own families came here as immigrants and have reaped the benefit of that lamp lifted beside the golden door, who now wish to deny the chance of others to breathe free. We can choose generosity, compassion, and openness to the strangers in our midst, rather than self-protection and fear. I belong to a tradition of openness that includes Walt Whitman, who celebrated Americas variousness, and in my own time I have had the good fortune to be the countrywoman of William Carlos Williams, Muriel Rukeyser, Denise Levertov, Allen Ginsberg, Silvia Plath, Galway Kinnell, Paul Muldoon, Lorna Dee Cervantes, Naomi Shihab Nye, and Li-Young Lee, to name only a few. For while we are remembering how much America has meant to its immigrants, lets remember also what the talent of its immigrants, the talent and energy of its immigrants, has done for America. Our art, our music, our fiction, our movies, our science and technology, our leadership is a magnificent mix of ethnicities. Native-born and immigrants breathing free, bouncing off each other, making America the cultural wonder of the world. May we remain so. May the mean spirited among us slink back to their corners. She is the author of twelve poetry collections and two critical volumes on the role of women in poetry. She has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the Guggenheim Foundation. Ostriker is professor emerita of English at Rutgers University.
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