In the opening lines of Jewish Poet Emma Lazarus’s 1883 sonnet, The New Collossus, Lazarus evokes the Statute of Liberty’s symbolism of hope, freedom, and compassion. The poem was read at a fundraiser for the installation of the Statute of Liberty, which had been gifted from France to the United States.

“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-tossed, to me:
I lift my lamp beside the golden door.”

— Emma Lazarus

PostedJuly 4, 2026

AuthorEllen Halter

CategoriesPoetry, Democracy

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If the moon smiled, she would resemble you.
You leave the same impression
Of something beautiful, but annihilating.
Both of you are great light borrowers.
Her O-mouth grieves at the world; yours is unaffected,

And your first gift is making stone out of everything.
I wake to a mausoleum; you are here,
Ticking your fingers on the marble table, looking for cigarettes,
Spiteful as a woman, but not so nervous,
And dying to say something unanswerable.

The moon, too, abuses her subjects,
But in the daytime she is ridiculous.
Your dissatisfactions, on the other hand,
Arrive through the mailslot with loving regularity,
White and blank, expansive as carbon monoxide.

No day is safe from news of you,
Walking about in Africa maybe, but thinking of me.

PostedOctober 13, 2019

AuthorEllen Halter

CategoriesPoetry

so much depends

upon

a red wheel

barrow

glazed with rain

water

beside the white

chickens

PostedJuly 19, 2019

AuthorEllen Halter

Dedication for a Plot of Ground

by William Carlos Williams

This plot of ground

facing the waters of this inlet

is dedicated to the living presence of

Emily Dickinson Wellcome

who was born in England; married;

lost her husband and with

her five year old son

sailed for New York in a two-master;

was driven to the Azores;

ran adrift on Fire Island shoal,

met her second husband

in a Brooklyn boarding house,

went with him to Puerto Rico

bore three more children, lost

her second husband, lived hard

for eight years in St. Thomas,

Puerto Rico, San Domingo, followed

the oldest son to New York,

lost her daughter, lost her "baby,"

seized the two boys of

the oldest son by the second marriage

mothered them—they being

motherless—fought for them

against the other grandmother

and the aunts, brought them here

summer after summer, defended

herself here against thieves,

storms, sun, fire,

against flies, against girls

that came smelling about, against

drought, against weeds, storm-tides,

neighbors, weasels that stole her chickens,

against the weakness of her own hands,

against the growing strength of

the boys, against wind, against

the stones, against trespassers,

against rents, against her own mind.

She grubbed this earth with her own hands,

domineered over this grass plot,

blackguarded her oldest son

into buying it, lived here fifteen years,

attained a final loneliness and—

If you can bring nothing to this place

but your carcass, keep out.

PostedJuly 12, 2019

AuthorEllen Halter

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference

PostedJuly 9, 2019

AuthorEllen Halter

CategoriesPoetry

Memorial: Blanche Chaiken

(March 10, 1922 - January 19, 2003)

by Ellen Halter

You found me

on the near side of childhood.

Your brow,

arched like a spade,

plunged through topsoil

to the secret garden

of my heart,

trillium running through it.

Your retinue

of nine-year olds,

sailed with you

after school,

through the projects,

its mean grid

of concrete and brick,

to the library.

Port of entry,

its bay and lagoon,

underwater dives,

we'd surfaced

late afternoon,

the sun in our eyes.

Out-of-focus,

blurred,

memory

I believe.

Ramrod as a mast,

regal as a queen,

you trod abroad,

toeing outward

away from me.

You, my dear,

interred,

bones to dust,

I can’t conceive.

Dumb to the love of the child,

deaf to the poet’s pleas,

To please,

please,

heed.

You there,

deferred,

a mirage,

I retrieve.

My shoulders squared,

my eyebrows raised,

readied to proceed.

PostedMarch 10, 2019

AuthorEllen Halter

CategoriesPoetry

TagsBlanche Chalken, poem, friendship

My eighty-year-old friend, Elli DeLing, just had a collection of her poems published by the Red Beard Press, a publishing company run by high school students here in Ann Arbor. They combed through a lifetime of her poetry, choosing their favourites for her book, then proceeding to edit them. Conversely, in her recent poems, Elli began to modify her style, to play to the tastes of the teens. This was an instance of inter-generational cooperation like I’d never witnessed before.

Deeply moved by her publishing experience, I visited the Red Beard Publishing company’s weekly planning meeting. A dynamic and positive young woman from the University of Michigan conducted the meeting comprised of volunteers from several Ann Arbor high schools. They already were at work on their next book project—a volume of poems by two nationally known poets, Danez Smith and Frannie Choi. I listened as they made design decisions for its cover, delegated work, and planned an outing to take the necessary photos.

For part of the meeting, a pair of local librarians visited to get advice and energy for their own teen outreach program. Students from the Red Beard press offered to lead workshops for them on fiction-writing and book design as well as to hold a poetry slam in the library with an open mic.

Overall, I couldn’t help think of Summerhill, the progressive English boarding school, that was the brain child of A. S. Neill, which so influenced students and teachers of my generation. The teens at Red Beard amply demonstrated how they can accomplish as much as their elders if given opportunities for initiative, decision-making, and creativity— all Neill ever envisioned for students at his school.

I left the meeting with the insight that young people are capable of far more initiative, creativity and energy than their elders. Certainly, in our tech-dependent publishing world, young people who are so conversant with the latest technologies, can be the logical leaders of adults. Maybe that is the dirty secret that those of us old enough to have to earn a living don’t want anyone to know. Young people are better than us in the end.

09.26 Later Note: My dear friend Elli passed away earlier this year. Below you will find a QR Code to view her memorial, as well as some of the social events we were a part of after the release of her 2014 poetry collection.