American poet. Born in New York to an affluent Sephardic family, she eventually brought her talent to Hebraic themes. News stories of bloody persecutions of the Jews in Russia, followed by contact with refugees in New York, inspired her prose and animated her poetry. “The New Colossus,” written on a single sheet of paper and now inscribed on a plaque imbedded in the Statue of Liberty, constitutes an invocation of welcome to the immigrants.