Historically, the epic poem has been the type of poetry best suited to nationalist projects, because its narrative establishes a “storied pomp” in literature that has yet to exist in the world. A Petrarchan sonnet is an awkward vehicle for defenses of American greatness. The poem’s peculiar power comes not only from its themes of hospitality but also from the Italian sonnet form that contains them. The liberal sentiments of Lazarus’s sonnet cannot be separated from these developments in geopolitics and capitalism.

immigration policy and European colonialism, well before the physical Statue of Liberty was dedicated. “The New Colossus” stands at the intersection of U.S. The year after Lazarus’s poem was read, the European countries met in Berlin to divide up the African continent into colonies. Though set to last for 10 years, various extensions and additions made the law permanent until 1943. The year before Lazarus’s poem was read at the Bartholdi Pedestal Fund Art Loan Exhibition in New York, in 1883, the Chinese Exclusion Act became the first federal law that limited immigration from a particular group. “The New Colossus” emerges at a pivotal moment in history. I Gave Myself Three Months to Change My Personality Olga Khazan But the details of the poem’s production and of its author’s biography do not fully capture the conditions under which the poem emerged, conditions that help to explain the poem’s message to its immiserated masses. She wrote the sonnet, after some persuasion by friends, for an auction to raise money for the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty. The Jewish Lazarus was a prolific writer in multiple genres, a political activist, a translator, and an associate of late-19th-century literati-including Ralph Waldo Emerson and James Russell Lowell. The story of the poem’s creation has circulated almost as widely as the lines of Lazarus’s poem. Whether the popularity of “The New Colossus” is a consequence of the poem’s timelessness, its curious forgettability, or its “ schmaltzy” sincerity, writers, readers, and politicians resurrect Lazarus’s sonnet to speak directly to a present moment in which anti-black racism, xenophobia, immigration bans, and refugee crises define the terms of U.S. To marshal Lazarus’s poem in support of a redefinition of American greatness, however, is to capitulate to the terms of Trump’s exceptionalism-and to ignore the poem’s own radical imagination of hospitality.Ī little like Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken,” published in 1916, “The New Colossus” is one of those poems that is constantly rediscovered and recontextualized. For Pelosi, diversity is both the existing strength of America and its source of revitalization.

It’s a recognition that the strength of our country is in its diversity, that the revitalization … of America comes from our immigrant population.” For Comey, diversity is greatness. It’s a statement of values of our country. Comey’s tweet echoes Nancy Pelosi’s interpretation from early 2017: “You know the rest. Several other public citations of Lazarus assume that her poem is reducible to a message about the value of diversity.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!” This country’s greatness and true genius lies in its diversity. “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

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