Emma Lazarus was born in New York City on 22 July 1849 and died there on 19 November 1887, only thirty-eight years later. Her name is now inseparable from “The New Colossus,” the sonnet whose plea for the world’s “tired,” “poor,” and “huddled masses” has become the verbal companion to the Statue of Liberty. Yet the familiarity of those lines has often obscured the larger achievement of the woman who wrote them. Lazar…
“The Jewish problem is as old as history and assumes in each age a new form. All the magnanimity, patience, charity, and humanity, which the Jews have manifested in return for centuries of persecution, have been thus far inadequate to eradicate the profound antipathy engendered by fanaticism.”
Neighbourhood:
American Poets, Political Poets, Social Justice Poets, Victorian Poets, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Spirituality, Wonder
Emily Elizabeth Dickinson was born on 10 December 1830 in Amherst, Massachusetts, and died there on 15 May 1886. During her lifetime she was known, if at all beyond her immediate circle, as the daughter of a prominent local family, an unusually lively correspondent, a gardener, and eventually a woman who lived with increasing privacy. After her death, she emerged as one of the most startling and essential poets in th…
“That it will never come again is what makes life so sweet.”
Neighbourhood:
American Poets, Confessional Poets, Death & Mortality, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Wonder, Spirituality, Longing
