Paying Homage To Those Magnificently Talented But Lesser Known Poets

[Tyr-Ziu Saxnot]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emma_Lazarus

Emma Lazarus---
Emma Lazarus, 1849 - 1887

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Emma Lazarus
Emma Lazarus.jpg
Emma Lazarus, c. 1872
Born July 22, 1849
New York City, New York
Died November 19, 1887 (aged 38)
New York City, New York
Genre Poetry
Notable works The New Colossus

Emma Lazarus (July 22, 1849 – November 19, 1887) was an American poet born in New York City.

She is best known for "The New Colossus", a sonnet written in 1883; its lines appear inscribed on a bronze plaque in the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty[1] installed in 1903, a decade and a half after Lazarus's death.[2]

Contents

1 Background
2 Works
3 References
4 Further reading
5 External links

Background

Lazarus was born into a large Sephardic-Ashkenazi Jewish family, the fourth of seven children of Moses Lazarus and Esther Nathan. [3] The Lazarus family was from Germany,[4] and the Nathan family was originally from Portugal and residents in New York long before the American Revolution. Lazarus's great-great grandmother on her mother's side, Grace Seixas Nathan (born in New York in 1752) was also a poet.[5] Lazarus was also related through her mother to Benjamin N. Cardozo, Associate Justice of the US Supreme Court.

From an early age, she studied American and British literature, as well as several languages, including German, French, and Italian. Her writings attracted the attention of Ralph Waldo Emerson.

She was also an early admirer of Henry George, and was a part of his Single Tax movement for a number of years.[6]

Lazarus wrote her own important poems and edited many adaptations of German poems, notably those of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Heinrich Heine.[7] She also wrote a novel and two plays in five acts, The Spagnoletto, a tragic verse drama about the titular figure and The Dance to Death, a dramatization of a German short story about the burning of Jews in Nordhausen during the Black Death.[8]

"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!"
Emma Lazarus, 1883

Lazarus began to be more interested in her Jewish ancestry after reading the George Eliot novel Daniel Deronda, and as she heard of the Russian pogroms that followed the assassination of Tsar Alexander II in 1881. As a result of this anti-Semitic violence, thousands of destitute Ashkenazi Jews emigrated from the Russian Pale of Settlement to New York, leading Lazarus to write articles on the subject, as well as the book Songs of a Semite (1882). Lazarus began at this point to advocate on behalf of indigent Jewish refugees. She helped establish the Hebrew Technical Institute in New York to provide vocational training to assist destitute Jewish immigrants to become self-supporting.

She is best known for the sonnet "The New Colossus"; its lines appear on a bronze plaque in the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty placed in 1903.[1][2] The sonnet was written in 1883 and donated to an auction, conducted by the "Art Loan Fund Exhibition in Aid of the Bartholdi Pedestal Fund for the Statue of Liberty" in order to raise funds to build the pedestal.[9][10] Lazarus' close friend Rose Hawthorne Lathrop was inspired by "The New Colossus" to found the Dominican Sisters of Hawthorne.[11] Lazarus is also known for her sixteen-part cycle poem "Epochs".[12]

She traveled twice to Europe, first in 1883 and again from 1885 to 1887.[13] On one of those trips, Georgiana Burne-Jones, the wife of the Pre-Raphaelite painter Edward Burne-Jones, introduced her to William Morris at her home.[14] She returned to New York City seriously ill after her second trip and died two months later on November 19, 1887, most likely from Hodgkin's lymphoma.

She is an important forerunner of the Zionist movement. She argued for the creation of a Jewish homeland thirteen years before Theodor Herzl began to use the term Zionism.[15] Lazarus is buried in Beth-Olom Cemetery in Brooklyn.

Emma Lazarus was honored by the Office of the Manhattan Borough President in March, 2008, and her home on West 10th Street was included in a map of Women's Rights Historic Sites.[16] In 2009, she was honored by induction into the National Women's Hall of Fame.[17] The Museum of Jewish Heritage featured an exhibition about Emma Lazarus in 2012.
Works

Lazarus, Emma (1888). The Poems of Emma Lazarus. Houghton, Mifflin and Company. Retrieved 2008-12-12.
"In the Jewish Synagogue at Newport"
"In Exile"
"The New Colossus"
"By the Waters of Babylon"
"1492"
"The New Year"
"The South"
"Venus of the Louvre"

References

Watts, Emily Stipes. The Poetry of American Women from 1632 to 1945. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1977: 123. ISBN 0-292-76450-2
Young, Bette Roth (1997). Emma Lazarus in Her World: Life and Letters. The Jewish Publication Society. ISBN 0-8276-0618-4. p. 3:
"Jewish Women's Archive: Emma Lazarus". Retrieved 2008-01-10.
"Four Founders: Emma Lazarus". Jewish Virtual Library.
Schor, Esther. Emma Lazarus. Schocken, 2008.
"Progress and Poverty". The New York Times. Jewish Women's Archive. 2 October 1881. p. 3. Retrieved 21 May 2013.
The Poems of Emma Lazarus in Two Volumes, kindle ebooks ASIN B0082RVVJ2 & ASIN B0082RDHSA
Sugarman, Yerra (2003). "Emma Lazarus". In Parini, Jay. The Oxford Encyclopedia of American Literature. Oxford University Press. p. 413. ISBN 978-0-19-515653-9.
Young, Bette Roth (1997). Emma Lazarus in Her World: Life and Letters. The Jewish Publication Society. ISBN 0-8276-0618-4. p. 3: Auction event named as "Lowell says poem gave the statue "a raison e'tre;" fell into obscurity; not mentioned at statue opening; Georgina Schuyler's campaign for the plaque
Felder, Deborah G.; Diana L Rosen (2003). Fifty Jewish Women Who Changed the World. Citadel Press. ISBN 0-8065-2443-X. p. 45: Solicited by "William Maxwell Evert" [sic; presumably William Maxwell Evarts] Lazarus refused initially; convinced by Constance Cary Harrison
"Exhibit highlights connection between Jewish poet, Catholic nun". The Tidings. Archdiocese of Los Angeles. Catholic News Service. 17 September 2010. p. 16. Archived from the original on 21 September 2010. Retrieved 20 September 2010.
Obituary in Century Magazine The Poems of Emma Lazarus in Two Volumes, kindle ebooks ASIN B0082RVVJ2 & ASIN B0082RDHSA
Esther Schor, Emma Lazarus (2006)
Judith Flanders, A Circle of Sisters (2001) page 186.
Simon, Briana. "Zion in the Sources: Yearning for Zion". World Zionist Organization.
"Manhattan Borough President - Home".

"Lazarus, Emma". National Women's Hall of Fame. Retrieved 1 November 2016.

Further reading

Cavitch, Max. "Emma Lazarus and the Golem of Liberty," American Literary History 18.1 (2006), 1–28
Eiselein, Gregory. Emma Lazarus: Selected Poems and Other Writings. USA: Broadview Press, 2002. ISBN 1-55111-285-X.
Jacob, H. E. The World of Emma Lazarus. New York: Schocken, 1949; New York: Kessing Publishers, 2007, ISBN 1-4325-1416-4.
Lazarus, Emma. Emma Lazarus: Selected Poems. USA: Library of America, 2005. ISBN 1-931082-77-4.
Moore, H. S. Liberty's Poet: Emma Lazarus. USA: TurnKey Press, 2004. ISBN 0-9754803-4-0.
Schor, Esther. Emma Lazurus. New York: Schocken, 2006. ISBN 0-8052-4216-3. Randomhouse.com
Young, B. R. Emma Lazarus in Her World: Life and Letters. USA: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1997. ISBN 0-8276-0618-4.
Vogel, Dan (1980). Emma Lazarus. Boston: Twayne Publishers. ISBN 0805772332.

PD-icon.svg This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Gilman, D. C.; Thurston, H. T.; Colby, F. M., eds. (1905). "Lazarus, Emma". New International Encyclopedia (1st ed.). New York: Dodd, Mead.

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The New Colossus
-------------By Emma Lazarus
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!”


Source: Emma Lazarus: Selected Poems and Other Writings (2002)

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https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/...agogue-newport

By the Waters of Babylon [V. Currents]
Emma Lazarus, 1849 - 1887

Vast oceanic movements, the flux and reflux of immeasurable tides, oversweep our continent.
From the far Caucasian steppes, from the squalid Ghettos of Europe,
From Odessa and Bucharest, from Kief and Ekaterinoslav,
Hark to the cry of the exiles of Babylon, the voice of Rachel mourning for her children, of Israel lamenting for Zion.
And lo, like a turbid stream, the long-pent flood bursts the dykes of oppression and rushes hitherward.
Unto her ample breast, the generous mother of nations welcomes them.
The herdsman of Canaan and the seed of Jerusalem’s royal shepherd renew their youth
amid the pastoral plains of Texas and the golden valleys of the Sierras.


------------------------------------------

In the Jewish Synagogue at Newport
Emma Lazarus, 1849 - 1887

Here, where the noises of the busy town,
The ocean’s plunge and roar can enter not,
We stand and gaze around with tearful awe,
And muse upon the consecrated spot.

No signs of life are here: the very prayers
Inscribed around are in a language dead;
The light of the “perpetual lamp” is spent
That an undying radiance was to shed.

What prayers were in this temple offered up,
Wrung from sad hearts that knew no joy on earth,
By these lone exiles of a thousand years,
From the fair sunrise land that gave them birth!

How as we gaze, in this new world of light,
Upon this relic of the days of old,
The present vanishes, and tropic bloom
And Eastern towns and temples we behold.

Again we see the patriarch with his flocks,
The purple seas, the hot blue sky o’erhead,
The slaves of Egypt, -- omens, mysteries, --
Dark fleeing hosts by flaming angels led.

A wondrous light upon a sky-kissed mount,
A man who reads Jehovah’s written law,
‘Midst blinding glory and effulgence rare,
Unto a people prone with reverent awe.

The pride of luxury’s barbaric pomp,
In the rich court of royal Solomon --
Alas! we wake: one scene alone remains, --
The exiles by the streams of Babylon.

Our softened voices send us back again
But mournful echoes through the empty hall:
Our footsteps have a strange unnatural sound,
And with unwonted gentleness they fall.

The weary ones, the sad, the suffering,
All found their comfort in the holy place,
And children’s gladness and men’s gratitude
‘Took voice and mingled in the chant of praise.

The funeral and the marriage, now, alas!
We know not which is sadder to recall;
For youth and happiness have followed age,
And green grass lieth gently over all.

Nathless the sacred shrine is holy yet,
With its lone floors where reverent feet once trod.
Take off your shoes as by the burning bush,
Before the mystery of death and God.

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https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poems/45937

year
sort ascending
title author
1888 Age and Death Emma Lazarus
1888 Chopin Emma Lazarus
1888 1492 Emma Lazarus
1888 Long Island Sound Emma Lazarus
1888 Echoes Emma Lazarus
1888 Critic and Poet Emma Lazarus
1887 By the Waters of Babylon [V. Currents] Emma Lazarus
1887 By the Waters of Babylon Emma Lazarus
1885 Venus of the Louvre Emma Lazarus
1884 To R.W.E. Emma Lazarus

1883 The New Colossus Emma Lazarus
1882 The Feast of Lights Emma Lazarus
1882 The New Year Emma Lazarus
1882 In Exile Emma Lazarus
1878 The South Emma Lazarus
1871 Work Emma Lazarus
1867 In the Jewish Synagogue at Newport Emma Lazarus

[Tyr-Ziu Saxnot]

St. Patrick’s Day: With an Irish Shamrock

----------------------By Charlotte Elizabeth Tonna
From the region of zephyrs, the Emerald isle,
The land of thy birth, in my freshness I come,
To waken this long-cherished morn with a smile,
And breathe o’er thy spirit the whispers of home.
O welcome the stranger from Erin’s green sod;
I sprang where the bones of thy fathers repose,
I grew where thy free step in infancy trod,
Ere the world threw around thee its wiles and its woes.
But sprightlier themes
Enliven the dreams,
My dew-dropping leaflets unfold to impart:
To loftiest emotion
Of patriot devotion,
I wake the full chord of an Irishman’s heart.

The rose is expanding her petals of pride,
And points to the laurels o’erarching her tree;
And the hardy Bur-thistle stands rooted beside,
And sternly demands;—Who dare meddle wi’ me?
And bright are the garlands they jointly display,
In death-fields of victory gallantly got;
But let the fair sisters their trophies array,
And show us the wreath where the shamrock is not!
By sea and by land,
With bullet and brand,
My sons have directed the stormbolt of war;
The banners ye boast,
Ne’er waved o’er our host,
Unfanned by the accents of Erin-go-bragh!

Erin mavourneen! dark is thy night;
Deep thy forebodings and gloomy thy fears;
And O, there are bosoms with savage delight
Who laugh at thy plainings and scoff at thy tears!
But, Erin mavourneen, bright are the names
Who twine with the heart-vein thy fate in their breast;
And scorned be the lot of the dastard, who shames
To plant, as a trophy, this leaf on his crest!
Thrice trebled disgrace
His honours deface,
Who shrinks from proclaiming the isle of his birth!
Though lowly its stem,
This emerald gem
Mates with the proudest that shadow the earth!

Sandhurst, March 17, 1827

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https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poe...eth-tonna#poet

Biography Poems, Articles & More
Discover this author’s context.

Charlotte Elizabeth Tonna
Poet Details
1790–1846
Protestant evangelical activist, journalist, editor, novelist, children’s author, and poet Charlotte Elizabeth Tonna was born in Norwich, England. The daughter of an Anglican priest, she lost her hearing permanently at age ten and became a pioneer of deaf education. She married twice, to George Phelan and Lewis Hippolytus Joseph Tonna, taking their names in turn, though she published under the name, Charlotte Elizabeth.

Elizabeth published dozens of books and tracts, including the once-banned children’s book The Simple Flower (1826), the novel Judah’s Lion (1843), Izram: A Mexican Tale; and Other Poems (1826), and Posthumous and other poems (1847); she also penned an autobiography, Personal Recollections (1841). Her nonfiction account of the working conditions English seamstresses faced, The Wrongs of Woman (1844), helped establish worker safety laws. Starting in 1834, she edited the Christian Lady’s Magazine, and from 1841 onward, she also edited The Protestant Magazine.

Tonna died at the age of 55 in Ramsgate, England, where she is buried.

[Tyr-Ziu Saxnot]

http://www.rattle.com/goya-could-hav...ouglas-blazek/

June 13, 2017
“Goya Could Have Painted This” by Douglas Blazek

Douglas Blazek

GOYA COULD HAVE PAINTED THIS

Next door my neighbor
massages his car with a mass
of diapers and a fussy muscle.
Fuels it spoon by spoon
with wealthy gas to perfume its exhaust.
Works his keyed-in personality
to soothe a herd of ignition sparks.
Drives his fantasies about his doubts
as demons round a rosary.

Trees in his hands are branchless pets.
Roses succumb to the passion of fence.
He pockets blocks of deadlocked stats.
Calculates estates in a sea of distress.
Stuck in logic to secure mere fact,
his speech adds anchor to the ship he subtracts.

I would rather eat hooks and electricity,
chew a quarter mile of chrome,
than live in this slum of prosperity,
but wherever I am Mr. Everywhere goes.

Goya could have painted this
but not with a brush.
Goya would have stretched our skull
to the dull diode glow
of a Sony canvas, then broadcast
our monstrous success as Pavlovian
reflex eating more resource
to fill its abyss.

—from Rattle #15, Summer 2001

__________

Douglas Blazek: “No matter how dramatic, facts require more than empathy to be relevant. Add them up and the sum is nothing the universe cannot rehash another way. Drop biography, and facts become more interesting. Poetry is the empathy that reveals the forces by plugging fact-flow into overview.”

This modern poet writes verses I can feel, understand and acknowledge as having been born of great poetic talent.--Tyr

[Tyr-Ziu Saxnot]

Clinton Scollard
Clinton Scollard [1860-1932] was a prolific American poet and sometime novelist. He was an excellent poet technically.
His verse often feature the natural world and depict small incidents that are honed to perfection. He has been compared with Robert Fros

***

Three poems by -- Clinton Scollard



An Exile


I can remember the plaint of the wind on the moor,
Crying at dawning, and crying at shut of the day,
And the call of the gulls that is eerie and dreary and dour,
And the sound of the surge as it breaks on the beach of the bay.

I can remember the thatch of the cot and the byre,
And the green of the garth just under the dip of the fells,
And the low of the kine, and the settle that stood by the fire,
And the reek of the peat, and the redolent heathery smells.

And I long for it all though the roses around me are red,
And the arch of the sky overhead has bright blue for a lure,
And glad were the heart of me, glad, if my feet could but tread
The path, as of old, that led upward and over the moor!

© by owner. provided at no charge for educational purposes

********

Dawn, The Harvester

The purple sky has blanched to blue
With freaks and streaks of rose and fawn,
While on the rolling meads of sea
Gleam the gold footsteps of the Dawn.

What harvest, think you, will he find
Whither he sets his feet to roam?
Upon that boundless beryl plain
Only the lilies of the foam!

© by owner. provided at no charge for educational purposes

**********

Khamsin


Oh, the wind from the desert blew in! — Khamsin

The wind from the desert blew in!
It blew from the heart of the fiery south,
From the fervid sand and the hills of drouth,
And it kissed the land with its scorching mouth;
The wind from the desert blew in!

It blasted the buds on the almond bough,
And shriveled the fruit on the orange tree;
The wizened dervish breathed no vow
So weary and parched was he.
The lean muezzin could not cry;
The dogs ran mad, and bayed at the sky;
The hot sun shone like a copper disk,
And prone in the shade of an obelisk
The water-carrier sank with a sigh,
For limp and dry was his water-skin;
And the wind from the desert blew in.

The camel crouched by the crumbling wall,
And, oh, the pitiful moan it made!
The minarets, taper and slim and tall,
Reeled and swam in the brazen light;
And prayers went up by day and night,
But thin and drawn were the lips that prayed.
The river writhed in its slimy bed,
Shrunk to a tortuous, turbid thread;
The burnt earth cracked like a cloven rind;
And still the wind, the ruthless wind, Khamsin,
The wind from the desert, blew in!

Into the cool of the mosque it crept,
Where the poor sought rest at the prophet's shrine;
Its breath was fire to the jasmine vine;
It fevered the brow of the maid who slept,
And men grew haggard with revel of wine.

The tiny fledgling died in the nest;
The sick babe gasped at the mother's breast.
Then a rumor rose and swelled and spread
From a tremulous whisper faint and vague,
Till it burst in a terrible cry of dread.
The plague! the plague! the plague!
Oh, the wind, Khamsin,
The scourge of the desert, blew in!

© by owner. provided at no charge for educational purposes