In the early years of Frost's career, critics positioned Frost as a speaker for America, a connection between nature, art, individual, and nation. His imagery provided every reader with access to the American dream: a life of homespun, real texture and neighborly conversation. In the January 1917 issue of Poetry, Harriet Monroe comments on the natural style of Frost in the context of American history by evoking the country's birth: "His New England is the same old New England of the pilgrim fathers—a harsh, austere, velvet-coated-granite earth." Critics shared Monroe's opinion for the next several decades and echoed the patriotic tone, much like G. R. Elliott in the July 1925 issue of The Virginia Quarterly Review: "The Frostian humour is peculiarly important for America. No other of our poets has shown a mood at once so individual and so neighborly…. His poetic humour is on the highway...