Long Island Sound: Selected Poems by Emma Lazarus
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| From Steadman Kondor Publishing |
Emma Lazarus is not that well known by name – even to the general American public, but she wrote the following lines that are well known all around the world:
Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!
In fact the whole poem, called The New Collossus, is quite marvellous. The Collusus of antiquity was one of the seven wonders of the world, a 30 metre high statue of Helios, patron god of Rhodes. It was built to celebrate their successful defence against invaders, during the political turmoil after the death of Alexander the Great. By contrast, Lazarus anticipates the New York’s Statue of Liberty, who is a feminine symbol of American’s welcoming of refugees and migrants from different troubled lands. The poem was solicited as part of fundraising to built the pedestal at the base of the Statue of Liberty.
Lazarus has a strong connection to New York City. She was born there to parents of Sephardic-Jewish heritage. During her lifetime she achieved recognition for her poetry and, with her poetic ability matched with wealth and privilege, was a bright star of literary salons. She also enjoyed a long and close friendship with the preeminent poet of the era Ralpho Waldo Emerson.
She wrote The New Collussus in 1883 when she was only 34, and she died five years later, never realising that her poem would find everlasting fame in association with the Statue of Liberty the great American symbol. Her body rests at Beth-Olom cemetery in Brooklyn.
I found her works while searching for poems that echoed the beauty of Long Island Sound, and to accompany my photographs of the sim (LI Sound, New York)
Long Island Sound is made up of my favourite short poems of Emma Lazarus. You can get a copy of this SL book at any of Steadman Kondor stores.
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| From Steadman Kondor Publishing |
