Harriet Monroe was an important cultural force in her age because she fostered modern attitudes in the arts.
She grew up in a staid conservative home in what was then the crude frontier city of Chicago, Illinois.
She watched its destruction by fire and its phenomenal revival as a modern metropolis.
She helped channel the fruits of Chicago's financial prosperity into the cultural life of the city and the nation.
Her greatest contribution was founding in 1912, Poetry, the first magazine devoted entirely to verse.
This is not the scene of war and bombing, but the aftermath of a fire that destroyed Chicago in October 1871.
When Harriet Monroe was a child, the city was a tinderbox, a jumbled warren of makeshift wooden structures.
And we had had no drop of rain for months.
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.
We had not known that a worse fire had already broken out on the south side.
We went to bed early and slept soundly through the fire that destroyed Chicago.
I vividly remember the following morning in the rain that poured down on smoldering ruins a day or two after.
I remember driving downtown with my father through streets ragged and broken, and vainly searching the rubble for records from his law office.
Harriet Monroe's father was a major influence in her education.
He taught her what proper young ladies then learned, Shakespeare, Scott, Dickens, and Thackeray.
But he went beyond that, planting in her some of his own tough idealism and perseverance.
Rather than shelter her, he took her with him to see the ruins of the fire, taught her to observe and record.
I was thrilled by a sign nailed up with the words roughly painted, all gone but wife, children, and energy.
And everywhere around us, and northward, as far as the eye could reach, nothing but charred ruins.
With only the castellated water tower rising high above the ghostly devastation.
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.
When Chicago architects rebuilt, they incorporated some of the latest innovations from Europe, modifying the showy buildings of international expositions into usable structures.
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.
This building, constructed in 1887, was novel in meeting the demands of the new commercial architecture that called for versatility and practicality.
Since business had to pay for the arts in the United States, Louis Sullivan designed his auditorium building with a hotel and office suites, whose rents would support what was then the world's largest theater.
All these were functional parts of the same building, a new concept in architecture at that time.
Harriet Monroe's first important commission as a poet was for an ode to be performed at the dedication of the auditorium theater, before the President of the United States and assembled dignitaries, some of whom paid $2 ,000 for a seat.
This performance was a crucial first step in Harriet Monroe's fight for the public rights of artists.
But even at this rare moment of personal artistic success, Harriet Monroe was alert to learn from architect Louis Sullivan's methods.
She could appreciate his ability to blend commerce and art under one roof, as well as blend old styles and new technology.
In this instance, the use of the newly invented incandescent light bulb to accentuate the character of the interior space.
Harriet Monroe's interest in architecture was reinforced by her brother -in -law, a friend and colleague of Sullivan's.
Her expression of respect for John Wellborn Root and his architectural projects took the form of an admiring biography, where she defended the innovation and experiments involved in the design of his rookery building in Chicago, such as the use of iron to support the granite -faced walls and glass to create a sunlit courtyard lobby.
Root and Sullivan had developed many new architectural ideas for the upcoming Chicago World's Fair of 1893, but the planners shied away from a chance to display their newest and boldest to an international public.
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.
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 and then charging the unprecedented fee of $1 ,000.
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.
But the poem itself was hardly the main attraction of the fair.
I had prepared a souvenir pamphlet edition of the poem for sale at a quarter each.
5 ,000 copies did not seem too many, but the public was unresponsive.
So all that winter I used the ode for fuel in the little stove which heated my bedroom study.
Apparently, the public for poetry had oozed away.
Her participation in the World's Fair by no means represented her unqualified support for all of its aspects.
She considered it an architectural disaster.
Decadent.
This was an imposition on the American public.
It was exotic or anachronistic, no doubt.
Not John Root's idea of a great modern show pointing to the future.
Rather, a dream of classic beauty.
After all, the classic -type building had attained its ultimate perfection in Greece, and its motives had been re -studied and developed through succeeding centuries until they were scarcely capable of any new vitalization.
Before this World's Fair, American architecture was developing simply and naturally toward a frank and beautiful expression of our life.
Unfortunately, the fair had become an incalculably inspiring force that has reached out into every American town and has lasted into the next age.
For all her fervor and newfound critical confidence, Harriet Monroe's literary successes were few.
She could not support herself on her poetry, so she turned to teaching modern literature and writing art criticism.
In these activities, she fought for other artists as intensively as she did for herself.
A self -taught critic with an intuition for quality, Harriet Monroe absorbed and championed controversial new departures in painting.
She went straight to the sources, to London, Berlin, and Paris, where she sorted out the best and fought for its acceptance.
She developed a zealous hope for America's future in the arts out of her combined admiration for the artistic traditions of Europe and the natural beauty of America, especially the West.
I recall my first trip to the Grand Canyon.
A year before, I had been in Italy, where students devoted their lives to the analysis of Giorgione's color and Donatello's silver line.
Under the new influence of the canyon, I began to feel dissatisfied with my own absorption in these matters.
I could not regret seeing Italy before Arizona, for only then could I be sure that Arizona was far more stimulating than Italy, that for us of the new world and the new century, it had the richer and profounder, more mysterious message of beauty.
This vast wilderness is waiting for the artist.
Nature, the ultimate modernist, is ready to broaden his vision and enormously increase his range, ready to give him not more learning but power over all his learning, not man -made facts and monuments.
He who does not return to nature clings to the skirt of civilization and may be content to repeat and elaborate.
This stupendous wonderland is destined to be a strong influence over the future of American art.
She imagined America as the meeting ground for the old and new worlds and future works of art.
This expectation became a mission for Harriet Monroe, especially as she thought America's artists were being too timid.
American art is under conservative management.
We are in an anemic condition, which requires strong medicine, and it will do us good to take it without kicks and wry faces.
American art is getting too pallid, move -less, photographic, better the wildest extravagance of the Cubists than the lifeless works of certain artists who ridicule them, better the most remote and mysterious symbolism than a camera -like fidelity to appearance.
Her critical powers were most severely tested in April 1913 when the first international exhibition of modern art came to America.
In her newspaper articles, she wrote serious criticism of art as opposed to the outright laughter and protest that greeted foreign works of the avant -garde.
In a profound sense, these radical artists are right.
They represent the revolt of the imagination against 19th century realism.
They represent the disgust with the camera, outrage over superficial smoothness which covers weakness of structure.
They represent a search for new beauty, impatience with formula, a reaching out toward the inexpressible, a longing for new versions of the truth.
Either these pictures are good or they are not.
If they are good, they will make their way in spite of objections.
If not, they will perish without the aid of objections.
We are fighting one of those battles of the intellect, those of us who have any, which are common enough in Paris, but altogether too rare in our provincially short -sighted community.
Harriet Monroe was irked that there was plenty of money to support the arts in America, provided that these arts were not controversial and were able to be put on public display.
It distressed her that American artists working in a modern idiom often found their recognition mostly in Europe.
Louis Sullivan had already complained of being emulated abroad and ignored at home, while James McNeill Whistler and Mary Cassatt had been obliged to go to Europe merely to survive as artists.
Chicago's Art Institute is flourishing on liberal gifts and legacies.
But why is there nothing done for poets, the most unappreciated and ill -paid artists in the world? One reason is that a poem cannot be exhibited, bought, and possessed in the manner of a painting or a statue.
Poetry has no one to speak for it, no group of powerful citizens to take special interest in it, to plead its cause.
A Milton might be living in Chicago today and be unable to find an outlet for his work.
Many of these thoughts were born out of her continuing efforts as a poet.
Nearing age 50, she still could not find publishers for her poems, audiences for her plays, or even just compensation for her critical pieces.
Her despondency increased when she booked an auditorium for a reading of her poems, had the tickets printed, asked everyone she knew to attend, and still faced an empty hall.
Refusing to consider that her own inadequacies as a poet might be responsible, she took the occasion as gloomy proof that the poet could not survive in America and set off on a world trip.
But Harriet Monroe was not the sort of person to remain despondent.
In fact, a chance acquaintance with the poetry of Ezra Pound gave her an idea that revivified not only her own ambitions, but the whole of American poetry.
A friend in London had given her Ezra Pound's poetry, and her growing indignation over the necessary self -exile of such a talented American poet culminated in her decision to become a publisher.
She came back to the United States and turned to her socially prominent and wealthy friends, who helped her work out a formula whereby 100 donors would each pledge $50 a year for five years.
Even so, her search for funds was not easy.
Only her extreme dedication to this venture allowed her to overcome her lifelong shyness when confronting potential patrons.
She knew that the business community would be indifferent or even hostile to poetry.
And important social leaders would be no more receptive.
In one case, she even had to approach a prominent socialite whose mansion had no outside doorknobs.
Improbably, her perseverance succeeded in capturing the attention of businessmen like the utilities autocrat Samuel Insull, the meatpacker Gustavus Swift, and Sears and Roebuck's president Julius Rosenwald.
In fact, her list of patrons read like Chicago's social and business directory.
With financial support, the next difficulty was drawing the talent which she knew was there.
There had never been a magazine devoted solely to poetry, but Harriet Monroe was convinced that creating a journal would give a voice to working but unpublished poets.
As in her art criticism, she went for the best.
So without ever having met him but inspired by his poems, she boldly wrote to Ezra Pound in England asking him to be the foreign correspondent for the new magazine.
The first issue of Poetry, a magazine of verse, appeared in October 1912.
Over the years, Poetry magazine featured a broad range of poets as fine as they were often unknown.
As irritable and arrogant as Pound could be, he also fought militantly for the few artists he believed in.
He opened the columns of poetry to some very impressive talents then being published in England, such as William Butler Yeats, Rupert Brooke, Richard Aldington, T .S.
Eliot, Robert Frost.
In contrast to Pound's esoteric selections, Harriet Monroe saw the art of poetry fulfilling a social function in a democracy.
She based her belief about the significance of poetry on a statement by Walt Whitman, To have great poets, you must have great audiences too.
On this philosophy, Harriet Monroe fostered impressive talents on her own, sometimes printing them over Pound's objections, like Wallace Stevens, Edna St.
Vincent Millay, Carl Sandberg, Vachel Lindsay, Edgar Lee Masters, William Carlos Williams.
Harriet Monroe edited poetry until her death in 1936.
It is difficult to say whether her magazine was the cause or effect of a poetic revival.
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.
Although Ezra Pound soon disgruntled with Harriet Monroe's policies, abandoned poetry early on, he was generous in his recognition of her contribution.
Pound wrote, The death of Harriet Monroe will be felt as a personal loss by everyone who has ever contributed to her magazine.
No one in our time, or in any other time, has served the cause of art with greater devotion, patience, and unflagging kindness.
We will not see in other such patience, another such kindliness in her place.
Her achievement was to set up a trade journal in the best sense of the word.
No other publication has existed in America where any writer could more honorably place his writings.
Pound's tribute still applies.
Poetry Magazine continues to be published today.
But perhaps the last few days of Harriet Monroe's life most faithfully reflect her character and ideals.
She had gone to an international literary congress in Peru to report on what had become known as an American poetic renaissance.
Even at age 76, she still took a leading role in fighting for the public acceptance of new artists.
After speaking in Buenos Aires, she decided to fulfill a long -standing wish to explore the ruins of the Inca Indians in the Andes.
She died suddenly in the high mountains, trying to reach the heights of Machu Picchu.
The poet in any primitive society or any well -organized civilization should be as much a matter of course as the carpenter.
No tribe, no city is complete without one.
The people of America should learn that their poets cannot do their work alone.
An artist must feel his neighbors behind him pushing, urging, arousing him.
A people imaginatively creative enough to invent a telephone, a light bulb, an airplane, build great bridges and skyscraper towers is full of the spirit of poetry.
The poets have only to set it free.
