The Open Door: 100 Poems, 100 Years of Poetry Magazine

When Harriet Monroe founded Poetry magazine in Chicago in 1912, she established it around a guiding principle: the Open Door, symbolizing acceptance of great poetic talent. Over its first century, the magazine published major poets including William Carlos Williams, Wallace Stevens, Rae Armantrout, and Kay Ryan, while continuing to identify emerging voices. To mark the magazine's centennial, editors Don Share and Christian Wiman created a new anthology by selecting one hundred poems from Poetry's archives. Rather than aiming for comprehensiveness or familiarity, they arranged poems to create resonances across a century of poetry. The collection juxtaposes established and lesser-known poets—Adrienne Rich with Charles Bukowski, Isaac Rosenberg and Randall Jarrell's war poems alongside George Starbuck's Vietnam War poem, and August Kleinzahler's "The Hereafter" before T.S. Eliot's "Prufrock." Short excerpts from Poetry's letters and criticism accompany the poems, offering context and multiple perspectives. The anthology celebrates the magazine's commitment to innovation and idiosyncrasy. Note: The digital edition includes John Ashbery's "El Dorado" instead of Frank O'Hara's "Chez Jane," which appears only in print.