“A Public for Poetry”: On Harriet Monroe and Poetry

“We believe that there is a public for poetry, that it will grow, and that as it becomes more numerous and appreciative the work produced in this art will grow in power, in beauty, in significance.”

- Harriet Monroe, “The Motive of the Magazine”

In 1912, Poetry’s founding editor Harriet Monroe believed that there was a readership for poetry and decided she would make it her project to support those readers and poets. Monroe, whom newspapers called the “patron saint” and “high priestess” of poetry, remains the longest-tenured editor of Poetry at 24 years. To cap the 110th anniversary year of the magazine, the Poetry Foundation’s fall exhibition Harriet Monroe & the Open Door celebrates Monroe’s significance as well as other women editors and poets who intersected with Monroe in the early 20th century.

The exhibition also explores the revolutionary care of this work. Monroe championed transformative, avant-garde poetry, and she paid poets to write it. Poetry had always been the “Cinderella” of the arts, as she put it, and by paying poets for publication and with prizes, she advocated for poets’ and poetry’s equal treatment with the visual arts and other cultural assets. Poetry continues to push for care for poets not only by publishing poems but also by acknowledging and supporting the labor necessary to deliver those poems to readers.

“A public for poetry. Now there’s a notion that’s been kicked around for a hundred years. …” 

- Christian Wiman, introduction to The Open Door: 100 Poems, 100 Years of Poetry Magazine

In a 1922 letter responding to a subscriber’s dismay at finding German poetry in translation in the magazine, Monroe wrote that after publishing poems from more than 20 languages—a feat most English-language magazines at the time did not manage—she believed it was vital to include all poets who strove for the common good, regardless of their nationality. She wrote

I confess that this reasoning was reinforced in my mind by a deep feeling that in the international brotherhood of the arts and sciences lies a chief hope of the future safety of the world against the menace of destructive forces. It seems to me immensely important that the tendency of artists and scientists, and other thinkers and investigators, to get together should be encouraged—otherwise we encourage the international hatreds which threaten modern civilization.

Monroe established Poetry under the Open Door policy that informs the magazine still. She intended that openness to allow poets to stretch artistically in whatever direction the work called them to explore regardless of school or style. Monroe’s message still hits home. Poetry and other arts unite people across borders and boundaries. Poetry has the power to bring people together and to show the humanity in every person.

“We want our magazine to question even as it provides respite, to amplify the voices of poets and readers while being a space where all kinds of poetry can be read, heard, and received with the wonder and grace it deserves.”

- Adrian Matejka in his first Editor’s Introduction

What I have been consistently reminded during a year of researching Harriet Monroe is that poems change while the spirit of the art form—rooted in experience, imagination, and the “power of words to transform lives”—remains. Poetry is one magazine in a living sea of journals, presses, zines, and community programs doing what we all do: loving language. We work and hope to love and share that language in the best way, to “amplify poetry and celebrate poets by fostering spaces for all to create, experience, and share poetry.”

I’ll stay in this glow of language as long as I can.

- Robert Eric Shoemaker
Digital Archive Editor