America: The Jesuit Review Features Nuns Who Write Poetry

Nick Ripatrazone contributes an article to America that brings to the foreground nuns who have written and published poetry. "These women were not the first literary nuns—Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, O.S.H., a 17th-century Mexican nun, is famous for her iconic verses—but something of a minor literary renaissance happened in mid-century America and abroad," writes Ripatrazone. "Although literary nuns tend to be overshadowed by poetic priests like Gerard Manley Hopkins, S.J., and Robert Southwell, S.J., these women deserve attention." Let's pick up from there: 

(Although often used interchangeably, the terms “nun” and “sister” connote different religious lives. Nuns are typically cloistered; sisters profess simple vows and live apostolic lives out in the world. Of the women religious depicted in this story, Jessica Powers fits the traditional description of a nun, living a cloistered life.)

Best known for administrative accomplishments—she served as president of Saint Mary’s College for 27 years and founded the School of Sacred Theology there in 1943, the first graduate theology school for lay persons—Sister Mary Madeleva Wolff was also a dedicated poet. Born in 1887, she studied medieval literature at Oxford at the same time as C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien, and earned her doctorate in English from the University of California at Berkeley. “I wrote at least one poem a month over a period of 15 or 20 years, every one of which I sent out at once to earn its living by publication in some magazine,” Sister Wolff said—her work appearing in The New Republic, Commonweal and elsewhere.

Continue reading at America.