The Modern Poetry Association, publisher of Poetry, the 90-year-old literary magazine based in Chicago, is the recipient of what could be the largest single donation ever made to a nonprofit literary organization.
Ruth Lilly, the heir to the Eli Lilly pharmaceutical fortune (think Prozac), donated $100 million to the MPA on October 18. Poetry, the monthly journal edited by Joseph Parisi, has published the work of luminaries such as T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, Carl Sandburg, and Marianne Moore since it was founded by Harriet Monroe in 1912.
The MPA will change its nonprofit status to a private operating foundation in 2003.
