Ah, July! One of the months I love the most. Not because it signifies the start of the second half of the year but because…it is my birth month. Yipee!
For this reason, I decided to feature a poet who was born on the month of July. I came across Emma Lazarus and liked her poetry at once. Below is her biography. I hope you enjoy her poems!
Emma Lazarus was an American Jewish poet born in New York City.
She is best known for “The New Colossus”, a sonnet written in 1883; its lines appear on a bronze plaque in the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty placed in 1903. The sonnet was written for and donated to an auction, conducted by the “Art Loan Fund Exhibition in Aid of the Bartholdi Pedestal Fund for the Statue of Liberty” to raise funds to build the pedestal.
Emma Lazarus was honored by the Office of the Manhattan Borough President in March 2008 and was included in a map of historical sites related or dedicated to important women.
Lazarus wrote her own poems and edited many adaptations of German poems, notably those of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Heinrich Heine. She also wrote a novel and two plays. Her most famous work is “The New Colossus”, which is inscribed on the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty. Lazarus’ close friend Rose Hawthorne Lathrop was inspired by “The New Colossus” to found the Dominican Sisters of Hawthorne.
Maria Michaela Poetry 