[noemon]

This is the poem dedicated to the Statue of Liberty:

How important is this poem to the American identity?

How important is it to you as a person?

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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!’

The first sentence contrasts the statue of liberty with the Greek Colossus, who was male, bronze plated and someone to fear, someone who conquered rather than someone who welcomed.

[Potemkin]

The first sentence contrasts the statue of liberty with the Greek Colossus, who was male, bronze plated and someone to fear, someone who conquered rather than someone who welcomed.

Emma Lazarus is a good example of a rather mediocre poet who wrote a single great poem. The octet is rather pedestrian, but in the sestet something suddenly seems to happen to her brain and she soars into the stratosphere, writing some of the most powerful lines of poetry in the English language. Those lines, when they were written, were nonsense, of course. America didn't want the "huddled masses", or the human refuse of the world. But, by writing those lines, she made them true. A large part of America's self-image as a welcoming beacon of liberty and a home for the world's unwanted human trash is because people read those lines and believe them. Shelley once said that poets are "the unacknowledged legislators of the world", and in the case of Emma Lazarus one can believe him.

[One Degree]

Thank you France for opening the doors of America to everyone you did not want. Damn French again.

[noemon]

Emma Lazarus is a good example of a rather mediocre poet who wrote a single great poem. The octet is rather pedestrian, but in the sestet something suddenly seems to happen to her brain and she soars into the stratosphere, writing some of the most powerful lines of poetry in the English language. Those lines, when they were written, were nonsense, of course. America didn't want the "huddled masses", or the human refuse of the world. But, by writing those lines, she made them true. A large part of America's self-image as a welcoming beacon of liberty and a home for the world's unwanted human trash is because people read those lines and believe them. Shelley once said that poets are "the unacknowledged legislators of the world", and in the case of Emma Lazarus one can believe him.

Cultural totems tend to become self-fulfilling prophecies.