You can go in now, miss,” the receptionist directed.Emma crossed the waiting room and entered the office. The Chairman of the American Committee motioned Emma to a chair across the desk from him.
“Thank you for coming in today, Ms. Lazarus,” he began. “We’ve reviewed your submission and, frankly, we were quite taken with it. You’re a very talented young woman.”
“Thank you very much, sir.” Emma’s cheeks reddened slightly with the compliment as she smiled, looking down at her hands in her lap. Rather than put her at ease, the flattery made her even more nervous.
“We found your poem to be compassionate, imaginative, and, well, sparkling with a certain vitality. We’re really quite excited about it. The Committee suggested that I speak with you today to see if we could... fine tune it just a bit.”
Emma looked up. While she may have been a bit embarrassed by the Chairman’s flattery, she was fiercely defensive about her work. “’Fine tune it’, sir?”
“Maybe that’s not quite the best way to put it. Let’s take a look at it together, shall we? That’s probably the best way to get at it.”
Emma was quite confused. She was led to believe that the American Committee had selected her poem as the winner. She thought that meeting with the Chairman was merely a formality.
“Now, right from the first line, we see strength, leadership, charisma, compassion. All the characteristics we want to present. But, we’re just not sure we want to give the impression that all we want are the ‘tired’ and ‘poor’. You know what I mean? ‘Huddled masses’? ‘Wretched refuse? These are very strong images.”
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