Harriet Monroe and the Landscapes of the American West (1899-1936)

Keywords: Landscape, The American West, Geopoetics, Native Americans, Poetry and literature, Harriet Monroe, Grand Canyon, Sierra Club
Abstract Type: Paper Abstract

Abstract

In 1899, Harriet Monroe, a middle-aged poet and art critic from Chicago who traveled to Arizona to recover from a pneumonia infection, spent her last dollar during her return homeward on a side trip to visit the rim of the Grand Canyon, and thus began her enduring, consequential engagement with the landscapes of the American West. This presentation surveys Monroe’s encounters with the Grand Canyon, Yosemite, the Sierra Club and John Muir, and Native Americans in the West. All became enshrined in Monroe’s subsequent poetry, prose, stage plays, and public and professional advocacy, including endorsement, as the representative of the Geographic Society of Chicago, of the proposed Indiana Dunes National Park. As the influential founder and editor of Poetry magazine, Monroe championed and contributed to the literary exploration and celebration of American landscapes. Taken as a whole, Monroe's writings on the American West comprise a deep dive into the constructive possibilities of geopoetical expression.