Between the Lines: A History of Poetry in Letters, 1962-2002

In November 2002 the Chicago Tribune broke the astonishing story that Chicago-based Poetry magazine had received a bequest of more than $100 million from the amateur poet and pharmaceutical heiress Ruth Lilly, making it at once the richest as well as the most famous literary organization in the United States. What happened before and after this remarkable gift is now revealed in Between the Lines, edited by Poetry’s longtime editor Joseph Parisi and its former senior editor Stephen Young. It is a concluding episode in the book that follows on the editors’ Dear Editor (2002), which chronicled Poetry’s first fifty years through its poignant, hilarious, and brutally frank correspondence with its contributing poets. Dear Editor told the story of Poetry’s central role in the Modernist movement and its rise to a position as the acknowledged magazine of verse. Between the Lines carries the narrative through the second revolution in American poetry, set against the backdrop of the restive early sixties, the tumultuous era of the Vietnam War, and the social upheavals of the last four decades. Virtually all of the close to five hundred letters in the book have never been printed before. In them, famous and aspiring authors tell Poetry’s editors of their artistic aspirations, rivalries, problems and successes, unvarnished opinions, and reactions to events of the day, unfolding the improbable tale of how perennially impoverished Poetry survived to make literary-and financial-history. The book is abundantly illustrated with candid photographs, drawings, posters, programs, and clippings from newspapers and magazines.