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“The Columbian Ode” and Poetry, A Magazine of Verse: Harriet Monroe's Entrepreneurial Triumphs

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 January 2009

Ann Massa
Ann Massa
Affiliation:
Department of English, University of Leeds, Leeds LS2 9JT.
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Extract

In 1911, at the age of fifty-one, Harriet Monroe of Chicago decided to seek in that city sponsorship for a magazine devoted solely to the publication and criticism of poetry. It was a bold project, if not an unlikely one. America had never had such a journal. Chicago had a reputation as the graveyard of little magazines. There appeared to be scant supply of good new poetry and less demand. Moreover, it was doubtful that Chicago's intermittent patronage of the arts could be diverted from the publicly prestigious forums of the Art Institute and the Chicago Symphony.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of American Studies , Volume 20 , Issue 1 , April 1986 , pp. 51 - 69
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1986

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References

1 Arguably, Poetry had a special place in Chicago patronage, though it is virtually ignored in Horowitz, Helen Lefkowitz, Culture and the City: Cultural Philanthropy in Chicago from the 1880s to 1917 (Lexington, Ky., 1976)Google Scholar. For, as Nelson Algren has pointed out, practically all Chicago's manifestations of interest in culture have had a question mark hanging over them. “The city's arts are built upon the uneasy consciences that milked the city of millions in the grain exchanges, in traction and utilities and sausage stuffing and then bought conscience ease with a minute fraction of the profits. A museum for a traction system, an opera building for a utilities empire.” Algren, Nelson, Chicago: City on the Make (Chicago, 1951), p. 82Google Scholar. But Monroe's Poetry was such a small venture that it made no sense for sponsors to see it as a sop to conscience, a means to prestige. To sponsor Poetry implied a belief in art for art's sake or a belief in Harriet Monroe.

2 Monroc, Harriet, John Wellborn Root (Boston, 1896), p. 218Google Scholar: Lederer, Francis W. II, “The Genesis of the World's Columbian Exposition” (Master's thesis, University of Chicago, 1967).Google Scholar

3 Harriet Monroe, “Biography” [1971], Harriet Monroe Papers, Regenstein Library, University of Chicago.

4 Monroe, Harriet, A Poet's Life (New York, 1938), pp. 116–17Google Scholar; McCormick to Burnham, 26 Feb. 1891; Burnham to Monroe, 28 Feb. 1891, Burnham Papers, Art Institute of Chicago.

5 Poet's Life, p. 117. A passage from one of Monroe's short stories, “On the Way to the Golf Links,” [1917], Harriet Monroe Papers, demonstrates her continuing interest in “solid men… middle aged men… the big burly males I see in a city crowd leaning eagerly over the bargain-counter, trying to get the most they can of civilization for their money, the best they can of wives and children, houses and lands, of power to buy happiness and achieve the beauty of the world. Money, power, power obvious and immediate…can be comfort and happiness… splendo and glory… can beckon genius to its service.”

6 Poet's Life, p. 118: Culp to Monroe, 6 Mar., II July 1891; Ellsworth to Monroe, Nov. 1891, Harriet Monroe Papers.

7 Tomlins to Monroe, 17 Apr. 1892; Monroe to Lawrence, 18 May 1892, Harriet Monroe Papers.

8 Chadwick to Monroe, 12 May 1892; William Morton Payne, “Suggestions in Reference to Miss Monroe's ‘Columbian Ode,’” 18 Mar. 1892, Harriet Monroe Papers. Her presentation in A Poet's Life of Payne's role in connection with the Ode is inaccurate. She at once attacks his criticism and suggests that her recollection may have been coloured by the fact that little of the substance of his response was communicated to her. The Dial, though not Payne, failed to admire or welcome Poetry when it appeared in 1912. The Dial was also hostile to Root's World's Fair plan. Poet's Life, p. 123; Dial, 12 (Feb. 1892), 358–59.

9 John Wellborn Root, p. 218; Monroe to Culp, 11 July 1892 (“suggestions have differed widely”), Harriet Monroe Papers.

10 Chicago Tribune, 17, 21, 23 Sept. 1892.

11 Poet's Life, p. 120; Monroe to “Dear Sisters,” 24 Sept. 1892, Harriet Monroe Papers.

12 Monroe, to “Dear Sisters” Poet's Life, pp. 126–27.Google Scholar

13 Margaret Sullivan to President and Council of Administration, 21 Sept. 1892; Burnham to Monroe, 22, 23 Sept. 1892; Monroe to “Dear Sisters”; Monroe, Harriet, Harlow Niles Higinbotham (Chicago, 1928), pp. 26–32.Google Scholar

14 Unidentified clipping, Harriet Monroe Papers.

15 Monroe, Harriet, “Columbian Ode,” Valeria and Other Poems (Chicago, 1892), pp. 220–34Google Scholar; Chosen Poems (New York, 1935), p. ix.Google Scholar

16 Harriet Monroe, “A Poet's Life,” Draft I, p. 174, Harriet Monroe Papers.

17 Brodlique, Eve H., “In Literary Chicago,” Frank Leslie's Popular Monthly, 24 (11 1892)Google Scholar; the World's Congress Auxiliary of the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893, Department of Literature, “Program of the Congress of Authors, 10 July 1893.”

18 Poet's Life, pp. 130–31.

19 Ibid., p. 131; The Press Publishing Co. vs. Harriet Monroe, transcript of record. Argued before the Circuit Court, 19–30 Feb. 1896. Monroe's outraged comments scribbled on verso of proof copy of “Columbian Ode,” Harriet Monroe Papers.

20 Transcript, p. 62; Critic, 21 (Oct. 1892), 185.

21 Transcript, pp. 47–50, 82, 155.

22 Ibid., pp. 71 3, 77, 119; Critic, 25 (Oct. 1894), 276.

23 Harriet Monroe, “Chicago,” pp. 4–5, 14, 16.

24 Poet's Life, pp. 116–17.

25 Ibid., p. 242.

26 Ibid., p. 243.

27 Ibid., p. 55.

28 Ibid., P. 243.

29 Pound to Harriet Monroe, Mar. 1913, in The Letters of Ezra Pound 1907–41, Paige, D. D. (ed.) (London, 1951), p. 43Google Scholar; Mottram, Eric (ed)., The Rexroth Reader (London, 1971), pp. 120–21Google Scholar; Sara Teasdale, quoted in Untermeyer, Louis, From Another World (New York, 1929), p. 174.Google Scholar

30 Poet's Life, pp. 244–46.

31 Ibid., p. 245.

32 Harriet Monroe, “Your chairman, in asking me to respond to this toast,” speech given at the time of Poetry's first anniversary, Harriet Monroe Papers. See, too, the tone and the content of her publicity material (Poetry files, Regenstein Library, University of Chicago) and almost any of her editorials.

33 Williams, Even Ellen, in her fine work on the early years of Poetry, Harriet Monroe and the Poetry Renaissance: The First Ten Years of Poetry, 1912–22 (Urbana, Chicago, 1977)Google Scholar, expressed surprise at Monroe's ability to attract as sponsors men “not obviously eligible as patrons of a magazine of verse,” and she writes: “When one considers that Harriet Monroe had nothing to give a donor in return for fifty follars a year, no institution behind her that could impress a social climber or publicize his generosity, it seems wonderful that she succeeded. She must have impressed the businessmen, and they impressed her” (pp. 16–57).

34 Poet's Life, pp. 249–50; lecture given at the University of Chicago, 20 July 1920, Harriet Monroe Papers.

35 Poet's Life, p. 245.

36 Ibid., pp. 243, 250.

37 Ibid., pp. 242, 247.

38 Poet's Life, pp. 204–17.

39 Harriet Monroe Papers.

40 Chosen Poems. See especially “The Hotel,” “The Turbine,” “The Telephone.”

41 “Introduction,” in Monroe, Harriet and Henderson, Alice, The New Poetry (New York, 1932), p. xxxvii.Google Scholar

42 Editorial of November 1912, quoted in Poet's Life, p. 243.

43 Williams, William Carlos, “Harriet Monroe,” New Republic, 94 (26 04 1938), 375–76.Google Scholar

44 Poetry, 49 (1936–37), 137–38.