Harriet Monroe Reads!

We're very grateful to Chris Mustazza and Al Filreis at PennSound for posting this series of recordings of Harriet Monroe, founder of Poetry magazine, and from whom this wee blog's name is derived. The recordings were made in 1932 but were never released to the public for reasons unknown. Here's a little more the recordings from Mustazza at Jacket2:

Harriet Monroe was recorded reading her poetry at Columbia University on January 29, 1932. The recording, made by Barnard professor W. Cabell Greet, was one of the first recordings in a series that came to be known as The Contemporary Poets Series, which began with the recording of Vachel Lindsay in 1931 (available here in PennSound). Several of Greet’s recordings were later released on distribution LPs, produced by the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE), for pedagogical purposes and distributed to schools on a subscription basis. These recordings of Monroe were never released (the reason why is unclear at this time). While there is still research to be done as to how Monroe came to be recorded in this session, it seems likely that Vachel Lindsay would have been the connection between Greet and Monroe. Monroe and Lindsay collaborated over the years, including Monroe writing the introduction for Lindsay’s The Congo and Other Poems and her publication of him in Poetry magazine. Lindsay died less than two months before these recordings we made, and so may have helped to arrange the recording session before his death. This is the first time the recordings, originally made on two aluminum records, are being distributed to the public. PennSound wishes to thank the staff at Columbia’s Rare Book and Manuscript Library for their help in obtaining and digitizing these recordings, as well as Ann Monroe, for giving us permission, on behalf of the Monroe family, to distribute them.

Thanks Chris, Al, Anne, and PennSound!