HARRIET MONROE
As a poet, Harriet Monroe knew that other poets had little chance to become
known and earn money. Few books by living poets were published, and magazines
bought poetry mainly to fill leftover space. She solved the problem by starting her
own poetry magazine,
Poetry: a Magazine of Verse, in 1912, through which she had
a major influence on the development of modern poetry. She knew that a new
publication with a small circulation could not pay its own way. Nevertheless, she
wanted to pay poets for their work and to offer prizes. She could think of only one
way to accomplish this: to persuade well-to-do people to support the magazine as
they did orchestras and art museums. By asking about 100 Chicagoans to pledge
$50 annually for five years, Monroe raised the money to launch her magazine. She
became the first editor. As its motto she chose a line from Walt Whitman: "To have
great poets there must be great audiences too." Poetry published the work of nearly
every notable modern American and British poet. Some well-known poems that first
appeared in the magazine are Carl Sandburg's "Chicago", Joyce Kilmer's "Trees",
T.S. Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock", and Vachel Lindsay's "The
Congo". Monroe never married. Her hobbies were travel and mountain climbing. She
continued as editor of
Poetry until her death on September 26, 1936, in Peru.
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