“Once upon a time, when man was new in the woods of the world, when his feet were scarred with jungle thorns and his hands were red with the blood of beasts, a great king rose who gathered his neighbors together, and subdued the wandering tribes...”
—Harriet Monroe, “As It Was”, October 1912
Volume 1 Number 1 of Poetry magazine.
When Poetry's first issue appeared in October 1912, the fifty-one-year-old Monroe could not have foreseen the magazine's impact. But it was exactly as if a bomb had exploded, and nothing would ever look, or sound, the same in American poetry again.
The editorial staff of the Poetry Foundation. See the Poetry Foundation staff list and editorial team masthead.