The Habit of Poetry
The Literary Lives of Nuns in Mid-century America
- Arts & Literature
- History & Biography
- Publisher: Fortress Press (Augsburg Fortress)
- Published: 2023
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Publisher's Description
Something of a minor literary renaissance happened in midcentury America from an unexpected source. Nuns were writing poetry and being published and praised in secular venues. Their literary moment has faded into history, but it is worth revisiting. The literary creations of poetic priests like Gerard Manley Hopkins, S.J., and Robert Southwell, S.J. have been both a blessing and a burden--creating the sense that male clergy alone have written substantial work. But Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, the 17th century Mexican poet-nun famous for her iconic verses and trailblazing sense of the role of religious creative women, set the literary precedent for pious work from women. Sister Mary Bernetta Quinn, a critic and poet, was praised by Flannery O'Connor and kept long correspondences with many of the best poets of her generation. Carmelite nun Sister Jessica Powers published widely. Sister M. Madeleva Wolff, poet and university president, transformed Catholic higher education. The Habit of Poetry brings together these women and others. Their poetry is devotional and deft, complex and contemplative. This mid-20th century renaissance by nun poets is more than a literary footnote; it is a case study in how women negotiate tradition and individual creativity.
Endorsements (3)
“In this wide-ranging and erudite study of a previously neglected subject, Nick Ripatrazone has uncovered troves of valuable cultural artifacts from the American Catholic literary tradition—and also reminded us of the lyrical mastery possessed by these women religious in their written work. The Habit of Poetry is a treasure both for the everyday reader and for the scholar of American Catholic history and culture.”
“Nick Ripatrazone’s The Habit of Poetry does us a great service in retrieving an important thread in the fabric of American Catholic literature of the twentieth century, the poetry of women religious whose talent and skill were recognized by both secular and religious critics. Women such as Madeleva Wolff, Jessica Powers, and Mary Bernetta Quinn, to name just a few of the nuns highlighted in this collection, found in their contemplative experience a way to negotiate both their commitments to religious life and their desire for poetic expression about modern life. In their published poems as well as in their correspondence with others, they were part of a larger conversation on the Catholic imagination at work in mid-century American arts and letters. This book had me searching the internet to find their poetry.”
“Since the Middle Ages, sisters and nuns have used religious life as a source of creative inspiration. In The Habit of Poetry, Nick Ripatrazone introduces us to an unlikely cast of characters: a group of mid-twentieth-century women who wrote dazzling, complicated, contemplative poetry and who corresponded with and befriended some of the greatest writers of their day. These women also happened to be sisters and nuns. Balancing engrossing biography and skilled literary criticism, Ripatrazone’s book offers us a snapshot of a surprising literary movement largely forgotten until now.”
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