Harriet Monroe & the Open Door

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

- Harriet Monroe, “The Open Door” of Poetry magazine

Poet, editor, scholar, literary critic, and patron of the arts Harriet Monroe (1860-1936) founded the literary journal Poetry: A Magazine of Verse in 1912. Monroe’s steadfast, deliberate approach to editing became her trademark. She strived to hold to the “Open Door” policy and placed art and integrity above her personal tastes and those of opinionated associates and other journals. Monroe's eye for enduring quality made avoiding the entrapment of literary trends and the safety of classic poetic styles easier. 

She succeeded on all fronts: Monroe was the editor of Poetry magazine until her death in 1936. During the final years of her life, she traveled extensively in service to literature and global literary culture. 

Under Monroe’s guidance, Poetry became and remained a highly regarded and influential journal, surviving a world war and the Great Depression during her tenure.

Monroe was an established poet in her own right and published several books during her lifetime, including Valeria: and Other Poems (1891, A.C. McClurg), The Passing Show: Five Modern Plays in Verse (1903, Houghton, Mifflin and Co.), Dance of the Seasons (1911, Ralph Fletcher Seymour Co.), and You and I (1914, The Macmillan Company).

Grieve not—it is the law. Love will be flying—

Yes, love and all.

Glad was the living—blessed be the dying.

Let the leaves fall.

- “A Farewell,” Harriet Monroe

Jump to selections

The Poetry Foundation compiled this selection of online resources and artifacts on Monroe in celebration of the exhibition Harriet Monroe & the Open Door and of Poetry magazine on its 110th anniversary.

“Harriet Monroe & the Open Door” maps the evolution of Monroe’s editorial philosophy, locating it within the cultures and structures of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. This exhibition includes original artwork by Lilli Carré alongside archival photographs, letters, and other documents from Monroe’s life.

Monroe founded Poetry: A Magazine in Verse after winning a precedent-setting copyright lawsuit regarding the illegal publication of her Columbian Ode, a dedicatory poem commissioned by the committee of the Chicago World’s Fair and Columbian Exposition of 1893. Her experiences at the fair were transformative: they introduced her to the ideas of Indian spiritual leader Swami Vivekananda and Indigenous writers including Potawatomi leader Simon Pokagon, and the events surrounding her Ode’s publication revealed the need to foster a generative environment for contemporary poetry. The subsequent payout from her lawsuit allowed her to travel the world and develop the connections that would help Poetry last over 110 years.

Monroe’s ambition was the creation of a “gallery for poems” where contemporary poets and readers would meet on the page. From their early championing of avant-garde and experimental literature to their payment and recognition for poets and artists, Monroe and her team of editors, including Eunice Tietjens and Alice Corbin Henderson, paved the way for poetry as we know it. 

Serving as Poetry’s editor for twenty-four years, Monroe remains Poetry's longest-tenured editor and the first and only woman to serve as editor permanently. Her early establishment of the “Open Door Policy,” which advocated editorial openness to contemporary poems without allegiance to “any single class or school,” led to the publication of some of the most influential English-language poets of the modern era. Over a century later, Monroe’s vision of the Open Door is still the aspiration of Poetry, a project serving poets and readers that is continually evolving. 

The exhibition was curated by Meera Alagaraja, Zada Ballew, Melissa Bradshaw, Katherine Litwin, Liesl Olson, Srikanth Reddy, Fred Sasaki, Robert Eric Shoemaker, and Kelly Wisecup.