An Invisible Partnership and an Unlikely Relationship: William Stanley Braithwaite and Harriet Monroe

Abstract

As they try to determine both the development and the nature of twentieth-century American poetry, historians and theorists often cite as significant such diverse considerations as Walt Whitman's influence, French literary innovations, Ezra Pound's insistence that the poet's role be reinterpreted, or the work of the little magazines to make poetry more accessible to the general public. Some credit Harriet Monroe (1860-1936) and her Poetry: A Magazine of Verse with the creation of a poetic renaissance ultimately world-wide in its scope. Yet, at a particular moment in American literary history, William Stanley Braithwaite (1878-1962) proved more important than Monroe. Arguably Braithwaite initiated this renewed interest in poetry, but literary historians have been lax in recording his contribution. Partly because of the current re-canonization of American literature, Monroe has lately received close attention; for reasons not difficult to discern, however, Braithwaite continues to be misunderstood. Perhaps no Afro-American critic ever wielded as much power as did Braithwaite; yet his work remains buried in his many anthologies of magazine verse; his name, virtually unknown to American literary historians. One does not wish to minimize Monroe's contributions, but her work takes on added dimensions when one compares it to that of Braithwaite. Furthermore, given the present interest in race and gender studies as well as in critical theory, Braithwaite's work assumes other dimensions. Not only did he create a new climate for American poetry, he also reconstructed and redefined the American poetic canon by broadening the base of authors to be considered long before this activity became a popular academic exercise. A few years after Braithwaite began his work in Boston, Monroe began hers in Chicago. In their efforts to find new audiences for poetry, they, without consciously attempting to do so, pioneered the mainstreaming of women and Afro-American writers. Had they known also that in less than a century her sex and his race would be considered significant factors in literary production, they may have treated these two issues more explicitly, but both of them while highly supportive of women and Afro-American poets saw gender and race as accidental, extrinsic matters. Conceivably, Braithwaite and Monroe might have formed a mutually fruitful partnership. Or, had they known what the future would say (or not say, as the case may be) about their work, they might have minimized their disagreements. Much of their initial animosity probably grew out of those regional distinctions that were more apparent in the latter nineteenth century and early years of the twentieth. By all historical accounts, Chicago was viewed as an upstart town, where such terms as