To end this month, our last nun-poet is SISTER BERNETTA QUIN. Like Jessica Powers, also a native of
Sister Bernetta was a teacher throughout her adult life, first on the elementary and secondary levels and later at many colleges, including Norfolk State College, the University of the Sacred Heart in
She also authored several scholarly studies of Modernist poetry, including The Metamorphic Tradition in Modern Poetry (1955); Ezra Pound: An Introduction to the Poetry (1972); and Randall Jarrell (1981), as well as numerous scholarly articles and book reviews.
According to Nick Ripatrazone (in Literary Hub, July 27, 2018), in 1948, Wallace Stevens received a letter from Sister Mary Bernetta in which she enclosed some notes on his poetry. He wrote back: “It is a relief to have a letter from someone that is interested in understanding…I do seek a centre and expect to go on seeking it.”
Later he wrote her: “I am not an atheist although I do not believe to-day in the same God in whom I believed when I was a boy.” And yet this great American poet did convert to Catholicism, and one wonders what part Sister Bernetta played.