Poetry Magazine

Poetry Magazine in 1916

A fairly recent (started in 1912) literary magazine has been publishing many great poets this year. Apparently it is all thanks to current Poetry editor and founder Harriet Monroe who, in 1911, persuaded one hundred Chicagoans to donate 50$ a year for five years to support a poetry magazine. From the Walt Whitman quote, “To have great poets there must be great audiences too”, printed on the back of every issue to Harriet Monroe’s statement, “The Open Door will be the policy of this magazine—may the great poet we are looking for never find it shut, or half-shut, against his ample genius!”, this magazine not only shows how it urges audiences to be open to new forms of the expression of genius in poetry but also actually has the verve and audacity to risk publishing these new forms of expression in poetry. Thankfully, because of Monroe’s magazine, just this year, innovative poets like T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, Yeats, Sandburg, Williams Carlos Williams, and others have been published.