"In the case of 'The New Colossus'—the formally stunning, politically subversive, yet oddly forgettable poem that Emma Lazarus composed in November 1883 and that was engraved on the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty in 1903—this story take us from ancient Greece to Hurricane Sandy, from US anti-immigrant legislation to the crimes committed against Russian Jews at the end of the 19th century, from the challenges faced by a woman poet who wrote for a very public audience to the other, silent monument that displays these lines." Alexandra Socarides • LARB

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