Much of the world was in financial distress after World War I, a time during which the editor of Poetry, Hariet Monroe, was vacationing in the United States southwest. Naturally, many of the modernist magazines during this era touched directly on the financial after affects of World War I in articles and advertisements, Poetry instead chronicles is a collection of Cowboy Songs, New Mexico Folk Songs, and Western Poems. This is in direct response, to the editors fishing trip to New Mexico as illustrated by her essay "In Texas and New Mexico: "While campaign oratory is loud in the land, and the nation is weighing it's two or three candidates in the balance and wishing it had more, what can most of us do but go fishing?"(September 1920 Vol.16 No.6 p.324). A bit of a trail-blazer, Monroe continually writes on a newer model typewriter than her contemporaries; she is forever bucking current social mores in her own manner.
As a woman of literary stature during the suffrage movement, she speaks nothing of the efforts of her fellow females until 1920, and when she does it is practially in opposition. In an article titled "Women or Men?" Monroe confirms what statistics of her era show: that men are superior to women in the field of poetry:
The controversy is amusing, but perhaps also enlightening.
The editor had suspected masculine preponderance in
the magazine, but by no means to such a degree as the figures
prove. They confirm her impression that more men
than women find in this art—for better or worse, for joy
or sorrow—their friend and confidant.(June 1920 Vol.16 No.3 p.147).
As illustrated in the essay, "The Conflicted Role of Women During World War I," Hariet Monroe was an unconventional feminist: "In her editorial policy, Hariet Monroe exemplified the goals of the feminist movement by acting in a position of power, but she did it without affiliating her magazine with the movement" (June 2009). Instead, she focused primarily on the culture of poetry in America, which was at the time as unappreciated as the role of women in the workforce. It was her role as a woman in the magazine which caused her to play a role in the feminist movement. Likewise, the role of Poetry in initiating culture helped to bolster American nationalism after World War I. The subject of the southwest is present in her Editorial because it represents to her the roots of American poetry. It is for this reason that she quotes The Nation in her essay "Frugality and Depreciation" which argues to fund poetic endeavors (namely her magazine) in spite of financially trying times: "The pitiful amount of public or private assistance given to American artists, men of letters, scientists, is one of the scandals of our civilization."(October 1920 Vol.17 No.1 p.31). Hariet Monroe supports women insofar as she is a successful woman, similarly, she supports her country insofar as it funds her art-of-choice and her magazine.
A modern woman of the post-war world:
