The Fox and the Cat, as they traveled one day, With moral discourses cut shorter the way: "'Tis good," said the Fox, "to make justice our guide!" "How godlike is mercy!" Grimalkin replied. As thus they proceeded, a Wolf from the wood, Impatient from hunger and thirsting for blood, Rushed forth, as he saw the dull shepherd asleep, And seized for his breakfast an innocent sheep.
When one begins naming the most influential people in modern English poetry, Harriet Monroe is a name that simply cannot be overlooked nor underestimated. Most well-known as the founder and editor of "Poetry, a Magazine of Verse," Ms. Monroe was largely responsible for the evolution of poetry in the twentieth century.
Born in Chicago, IL in December 1860, Monroe revealed in her autobiography that she grew up a lonely child, finding solace and comfort in the poetry books of her father, an attorney in the Windy City. She graduated from the academy of Visitation Convent in Washington, D.C. in 1879 and embarked on a writing career that would include work as an art and drama critic and an author of verse and plays.
Miss Monroe founded the "Poetry" magazine with the help of a number of investors, as a means of developing and encouraging poetry from both established and new authors alike. Some of the now more well-known authors she introduced to the world include Vachel Lindsay, Carl Sandburg, Edna St. Millay and through her collaboration with Ezra Pound, she introduced Americans to him and a slew of poets from across the Atlantic, including T.S. Eliot and William Carlos Williams. Undeniably, she played a huge role in influencing the public to accept and grow to love the modernist style just beginning to make its way into English poetry.
These are days when I would want to begin again in some stranger-city, to drift into a bar secretive and self-contained, my whole past packed inside me like a bomb. An unknown
"She's pretty to walk with, And witty to talk with, And pleasant, too, to think on." Sir John Suckling
She has a beauty of her own, A beauty of a paler tone Than English belles; Yet southern sun and southern air Have kissed her cheeks, until they wear The dainty tints that oft appear On rosy shells. Her frank, clear eyes bespeak a mind Old-world traditions fail to bind. She is not shy Or bold, but simply self-possess ed; Her independence adds a zest Unto her speech, her piquant jest, Her quaint reply.
When one begins naming the most influential people in modern English poetry, Harriet Monroe is a name that simply cannot be overlooked nor underestimated. Most well-known as the founder and editor of "Poetry, a Magazine of Verse," Ms. Monroe was largely responsible for the evolution of poetry in the twentieth century.
