Certainly, no one woke up today imagining the day would be filled with chatter about Emma Lazarus, but that's exactly what's happened. You might very reasonably wonder why.
While announcing a new and predictably cruel policy change targeting legal immigrants who make use of public assistance on NPR's Morning Edition today, acting director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Ken Cuccinelli revised the most beloved lines of Lazarus' "The New Colossus," which famously adorns the base of the Statue of Liberty. In place of "Give me your tired, your poor, / Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free," he offered "Give me your tired and your poor who can stand on their own two feet and who will not become a public charge," and in the process earned the memorable Jezebel headline, "Terrible Asshole Would Like to Update 'The New Colossus,'" along with a lot of well-deserved scorn.
It also served as a worthwhile reminder of the symbolic power of Lazarus' sonnet. This isn't the first time we've written about "The New Colossus" on PennSound Daily — in late January 2017, as we first started to see how rabidly anti-immigration this administration's policies would be, we humbly offered up the poem "as a reminder of the high-minded ideals of acceptance that we, as a nation of immigrants, should hold ourselves to."
Quoting a 2004 Library of Congress exhibit on America's "century of immigration" we noted that "Lazarus, who had worked with East European immigrants through her association with the Hebrew Emigrant Aid Society, composed 'The New Colossus' in 1883 as part of a fundraising campaign for erecting the Statue of Liberty." However, it wasn't until thirty years later, in 1903, that "a tablet with her words — 'Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free' — was affixed to the statue's base." They conclude by observing that "These words remain the quintessential expression of America's vision of itself as a haven for those denied freedom and opportunity in their native lands." Once again, we proudly present Lazarus' words here:
The New Colossus
Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "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!"
We're also happy to point our listeners in the direction of PoemTalk #58 on Bernadette Mayer's poem, "The Tragic Condition of the Statue of Liberty," which begins by quoting Lazarus' final, and most iconic, lines. As for director Cuccinelli, we gently implore him to leave poetry to the poets.
