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Harriet Monroe was an important cultural force in her age because she fostered modern attitudes in the arts.

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She grew up in a staid conservative home in what was then the crude frontier city of Chicago, Illinois.

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She watched its destruction by fire and its phenomenal revival as a modern metropolis.

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She helped channel the fruits of Chicago's financial prosperity into the cultural life of the city and the nation.

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Her greatest contribution was founding in 1912, Poetry, the first magazine devoted entirely to verse.

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This is not the scene of war and bombing, but the aftermath of a fire that destroyed Chicago in October 1871.

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When Harriet Monroe was a child, the city was a tinderbox, a jumbled warren of makeshift wooden structures.

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And we had had no drop of rain for months.

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We had heard of a bad fire on the west side that night, which we thought we could safely ignore, since that district was not close by.

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We had not known that a worse fire had already broken out on the south side.

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We went to bed early and slept soundly through the fire that destroyed Chicago.

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I vividly remember the following morning in the rain that poured down on smoldering ruins a day or two after.

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I remember driving downtown with my father through streets ragged and broken, and vainly searching the rubble for records from his law office.

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Harriet Monroe's father was a major influence in her education.

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He taught her what proper young ladies then learned, Shakespeare, Scott, Dickens, and Thackeray.

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But he went beyond that, planting in her some of his own tough idealism and perseverance.

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Rather than shelter her, he took her with him to see the ruins of the fire, taught her to observe and record.

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I was thrilled by a sign nailed up with the words roughly painted, all gone but wife, children, and energy.

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And everywhere around us, and northward, as far as the eye could reach, nothing but charred ruins.

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With only the castellated water tower rising high above the ghostly devastation.

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Turning down offers to move to other cities, my father chose to remain, while the city of his early choice, Chicago, grew into a metropolis.

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When Chicago architects rebuilt, they incorporated some of the latest innovations from Europe,

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modifying the showy buildings of international expositions into usable structures.

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The plentiful supply of steel, the recent invention of the elevator, and the high cost of real estate helped architects even force them to think and build up, not out.

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This building, constructed in 1887, was novel in meeting the demands of the new commercial architecture that called for versatility and practicality.

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Since business had to pay for the arts in the United States, Louis Sullivan designed his auditorium building with a hotel and office suites,

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whose rents would support what was then the world's largest theater.

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All these were functional parts of the same building, a new concept in architecture at that time.

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Harriet Monroe's first important commission as a poet was for an ode to be performed at the dedication of the auditorium theater,

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before the President of the United States and assembled dignitaries, some of whom paid $2,000 for a seat.

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This performance was a crucial first step in Harriet Monroe's fight for the public rights of artists.

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But even at this rare moment of personal artistic success, Harriet Monroe was alert to learn from architect Louis Sullivan's methods.

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She could appreciate his ability to blend commerce and art under one roof, as well as blend old styles and new technology.

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In this instance, the use of the newly invented incandescent light bulb to accentuate the character of the interior space.

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Harriet Monroe's interest in architecture was reinforced by her brother-in-law, a friend and colleague of Sullivan's.

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Her expression of respect for John Wellborn Root and his architectural projects took the form of an admiring biography,

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where she defended the innovation and experiments involved in the design of his rookery building in Chicago,

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such as the use of iron to support the granite-faced walls and glass to create a sunlit courtyard lobby.

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Root and Sullivan had developed many new architectural ideas for the upcoming Chicago World's Fair of 1893,

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but the planners shied away from a chance to display their newest and boldest to an international public.

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The White City, as it boasted itself, used imposing and homogenized pomp to offset the unwanted image of Chicago as hog butcher to the world.

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Encouraged by her early success, Harriet Monroe insisted on public support for poetry at the World's Fair by pressing the planners for a commission

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and then charging the unprecedented fee of $1,000.

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And then, when a New York newspaper printed the text of the poem without her authorization, she sued and won, causing a landmark decision in publication rights.

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But the poem itself was hardly the main attraction of the fair.

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I had prepared a souvenir pamphlet edition of the poem for sale at a quarter each.

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5,000 copies did not seem too many, but the public was unresponsive.

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So all that winter I used the ode for fuel in the little stove which heated my bedroom study.

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Apparently, the public for poetry had oozed away.

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Her participation in the World's Fair by no means represented her unqualified support for all of its aspects.

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She considered it an architectural disaster.

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Decadent.

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This was an imposition on the American public.

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It was exotic or anachronistic, no doubt.

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Not John Root's idea of a great modern show pointing to the future.

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Rather, a dream of classic beauty.

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After all, the classic-type building had attained its ultimate perfection in Greece,

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and its motives had been re-studied and developed through succeeding centuries

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until they were scarcely capable of any new vitalization.

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Before this World's Fair, American architecture was developing simply and naturally

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toward a frank and beautiful expression of our life.

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Unfortunately, the fair had become an incalculably inspiring force

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that has reached out into every American town and has lasted into the next age.

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For all her fervor and newfound critical confidence,

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Harriet Monroe's literary successes were few.

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She could not support herself on her poetry,

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so she turned to teaching modern literature and writing art criticism.

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In these activities, she fought for other artists as intensively as she did for herself.

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A self-taught critic with an intuition for quality,

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Harriet Monroe absorbed and championed controversial new departures in painting.

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She went straight to the sources, to London, Berlin, and Paris,

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where she sorted out the best and fought for its acceptance.

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She developed a zealous hope for America's future in the arts

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out of her combined admiration for the artistic traditions of Europe

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and the natural beauty of America, especially the West.

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I recall my first trip to the Grand Canyon.

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A year before, I had been in Italy, where students devoted their lives

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to the analysis of Giorgione's color and Donatello's silver line.

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Under the new influence of the canyon,

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I began to feel dissatisfied with my own absorption in these matters.

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I could not regret seeing Italy before Arizona,

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for only then could I be sure that Arizona was far more stimulating than Italy,

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that for us of the new world and the new century,

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it had the richer and profounder, more mysterious message of beauty.

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This vast wilderness is waiting for the artist.

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Nature, the ultimate modernist, is ready to broaden his vision

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and enormously increase his range, ready to give him not more learning but power

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over all his learning, not man-made facts and monuments.

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He who does not return to nature clings to the skirt of civilization

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and may be content to repeat and elaborate.

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This stupendous wonderland is destined to be a strong influence

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over the future of American art.

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She imagined America as the meeting ground for the old and new worlds

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and future works of art.

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This expectation became a mission for Harriet Monroe,

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especially as she thought America's artists were being too timid.

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American art is under conservative management.

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We are in an anemic condition, which requires strong medicine,

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and it will do us good to take it without kicks and wry faces.

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American art is getting too pallid, move-less, photographic,

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better the wildest extravagance of the Cubists

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than the lifeless works of certain artists who ridicule them,

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better the most remote and mysterious symbolism

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than a camera-like fidelity to appearance.

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Her critical powers were most severely tested in April 1913

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when the first international exhibition of modern art came to America.

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In her newspaper articles, she wrote serious criticism of art

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as opposed to the outright laughter and protest

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that greeted foreign works of the avant-garde.

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In a profound sense, these radical artists are right.

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They represent the revolt of the imagination against 19th century realism.

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They represent the disgust with the camera,

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outrage over superficial smoothness which covers weakness of structure.

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They represent a search for new beauty, impatience with formula,

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a reaching out toward the inexpressible,

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a longing for new versions of the truth.

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Either these pictures are good or they are not.

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If they are good, they will make their way in spite of objections.

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If not, they will perish without the aid of objections.

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We are fighting one of those battles of the intellect, those of us who have any,

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which are common enough in Paris,

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but altogether too rare in our provincially short-sighted community.

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Harriet Monroe was irked that there was plenty of money to support the arts in America,

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provided that these arts were not controversial and were able to be put on public display.

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It distressed her that American artists working in a modern idiom

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often found their recognition mostly in Europe.

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Louis Sullivan had already complained of being emulated abroad and ignored at home,

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while James McNeill Whistler and Mary Cassatt had been obliged to go to Europe merely to survive as artists.

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Chicago's Art Institute is flourishing on liberal gifts and legacies.

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But why is there nothing done for poets,

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the most unappreciated and ill-paid artists in the world?

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One reason is that a poem cannot be exhibited, bought, and possessed in the manner of a painting or a statue.

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Poetry has no one to speak for it,

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no group of powerful citizens to take special interest in it, to plead its cause.

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A Milton might be living in Chicago today and be unable to find an outlet for his work.

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Many of these thoughts were born out of her continuing efforts as a poet.

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Nearing age 50, she still could not find publishers for her poems, audiences for her plays,

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or even just compensation for her critical pieces.

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Her despondency increased when she booked an auditorium for a reading of her poems,

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had the tickets printed, asked everyone she knew to attend, and still faced an empty hall.

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Refusing to consider that her own inadequacies as a poet might be responsible,

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she took the occasion as gloomy proof that the poet could not survive in America and set off on a world trip.

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But Harriet Monroe was not the sort of person to remain despondent.

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In fact, a chance acquaintance with the poetry of Ezra Pound gave her an idea that revivified not only her own ambitions,

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but the whole of American poetry.

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A friend in London had given her Ezra Pound's poetry,

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and her growing indignation over the necessary self-exile of such a talented American poet

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culminated in her decision to become a publisher.

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She came back to the United States and turned to her socially prominent and wealthy friends,

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who helped her work out a formula whereby 100 donors would each pledge $50 a year for five years.

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Even so, her search for funds was not easy.

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Only her extreme dedication to this venture allowed her to overcome her lifelong shyness when confronting potential patrons.

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She knew that the business community would be indifferent or even hostile to poetry.

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And important social leaders would be no more receptive.

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In one case, she even had to approach a prominent socialite whose mansion had no outside doorknobs.

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Improbably, her perseverance succeeded in capturing the attention of businessmen like the utilities autocrat Samuel Insull,

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the meatpacker Gustavus Swift, and Sears and Roebuck's president Julius Rosenwald.

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In fact, her list of patrons read like Chicago's social and business directory.

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With financial support, the next difficulty was drawing the talent which she knew was there.

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There had never been a magazine devoted solely to poetry,

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but Harriet Monroe was convinced that creating a journal would give a voice to working but unpublished poets.

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As in her art criticism, she went for the best.

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So without ever having met him but inspired by his poems,

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she boldly wrote to Ezra Pound in England asking him to be the foreign correspondent for the new magazine.

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The first issue of Poetry, a magazine of verse, appeared in October 1912.

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Over the years, Poetry magazine featured a broad range of poets as fine as they were often unknown.

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As irritable and arrogant as Pound could be, he also fought militantly for the few artists he believed in.

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He opened the columns of poetry to some very impressive talents then being published in England,

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such as William Butler Yeats, Rupert Brooke, Richard Aldington, T.S. Eliot, Robert Frost.

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In contrast to Pound's esoteric selections, Harriet Monroe saw the art of poetry fulfilling a social function in a democracy.

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She based her belief about the significance of poetry on a statement by Walt Whitman,

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To have great poets, you must have great audiences too.

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On this philosophy, Harriet Monroe fostered impressive talents on her own,

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sometimes printing them over Pound's objections, like Wallace Stevens, Edna St. Vincent Millay,

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Carl Sandberg, Vachel Lindsay, Edgar Lee Masters, William Carlos Williams.

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Harriet Monroe edited poetry until her death in 1936.

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It is difficult to say whether her magazine was the cause or effect of a poetic revival.

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At any rate, Poetry Magazine came into being at exactly the right time to give a voice to new talents of astonishing number and rank.

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Although Ezra Pound soon disgruntled with Harriet Monroe's policies, abandoned poetry early on,

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he was generous in his recognition of her contribution.

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Pound wrote,

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The death of Harriet Monroe will be felt as a personal loss by everyone who has ever contributed to her magazine.

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No one in our time, or in any other time, has served the cause of art with greater devotion, patience, and unflagging kindness.

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We will not see in other such patience, another such kindliness in her place.

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Her achievement was to set up a trade journal in the best sense of the word.

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No other publication has existed in America where any writer could more honorably place his writings.

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Pound's tribute still applies.

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Poetry Magazine continues to be published today.

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But perhaps the last few days of Harriet Monroe's life most faithfully reflect her character and ideals.

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She had gone to an international literary congress in Peru to report on what had become known as an American poetic renaissance.

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Even at age 76, she still took a leading role in fighting for the public acceptance of new artists.

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After speaking in Buenos Aires, she decided to fulfill a long-standing wish to explore the ruins of the Inca Indians in the Andes.

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She died suddenly in the high mountains, trying to reach the heights of Machu Picchu.

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The poet in any primitive society or any well-organized civilization should be as much a matter of course as the carpenter.

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No tribe, no city is complete without one.

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The people of America should learn that their poets cannot do their work alone.

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An artist must feel his neighbors behind him pushing, urging, arousing him.

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A people imaginatively creative enough to invent a telephone, a light bulb, an airplane,

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build great bridges and skyscraper towers is full of the spirit of poetry.

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The poets have only to set it free.