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Mary Bernetta Quinn (1915–2003) was a Franciscan nun, literary critic, and correspondent with many of the most notable poets and writers of her era (see correspondence section below). The author of five books and many academic articles, she published on the Catholic Church's engagement with modernist poetry, particularly in works by Ezra Pound and Randall Jarrell, both of whom were among her many literary correspondents.

Early life and education

She was born Viola Roselyn Quinn in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, on September 19, 1915 to Ellen M. Foran Quinn, a native of Ireland, and Bernard Franklin Quinn, a native of Wisconsin. In 1934 she entered the Franciscan Sisters of the Congregation of Our Lady of Lourdes at St. Francis Parish in Lake Geneva. She professed her first vows in 1937. She earned a bachelor's degree in English at the College of St. Teresa in Winona, Minnesota in 1942. In 1944 she earned an M.A. in English at the Catholic University of America in Washington, DC. In 1952 she defended her dissertation and earned a doctorate in English from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her dissertation was excerpted in The Sewanee Review. She also studied abroad, doing coursework in Ireland

Career

Teaching

She began her teaching career in elementary and secondary schools in St. Priscilla Parish, Chicago, and Winona and Austin, Minnesota. In 1954 she joined the English department faculty of the College of St. Teresa in Winona, Wisconsin, remaining there until to 1967. She had an interest in historically Black colleges and universities, teaching at Allen University in South Carolina and Norfolk State University in Virginia. She also taught abroad at two Tokyo, Japan campuses, University of the Sacred Heart. and Meiji Gakuin University. She attended the International Yeats Summer School in Sligo, Ireland. She had visiting professorships at the Catholic University of America, SUNY-Buffalo, St. Andrew's Presbyterian College in North Carolina (now St. Andrew's University), and Siena College.

Poetry

She wrote poetry all her life, and it began appearing in print in the 1940s. In 1949 she published "Explanation" in College English, and in 1959 she published "For Ruth Wallerstein Who Died in England, April 1958" there. Flannery O'Connor, a Catholic who attended daily mass, spoke highly of “the Sister at Minneapolis that writes such good poetry." Quinn corresponded with O'Connor and her mother Regina. Quinn's poem, "Children Carrying Wood," appeared in Art Journal in 1962, and "In Branches of Spruce" in The Sewanee Review in 1963.

Books

She published five books, Motive and Method in the Cantos of Ezra Pound (with Hugh Kenner, Guy Davenport, and Forrest Read Jr.) (Columbia University Press, 1953), The Metamorphic Tradition in Modern Poetry (1955), reviewed by such figures as R. W. B. Lewis, David Ferry, Austin Warren, and Hazard Adams, Give Me Souls: A Life of Raphael Cardinal Merry del Val (Newman Press 1958), reviewed in the New York Times, To God Alone the Glory: A Life of St. Bonaventure (1962), and Ezra Pound: An Introduction to the Poetry (Columbia Introductions to Twentieth-Century American Poetry, 1972). After her retirement she published a poetry collection, --dancing in stillness (1983). She had residencies at Yaddo, the Bellagio Center (Rockefeller Foundation), and the MacDowell Colony, and received grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities and National Endowment for the Arts.

Correspondence with literary figures

She had significant letter-writing correspondences with major literary figures including Flannery O'Connor and her mother Regina, novelists Caroline Gordon, Doris Betts, Heather Ross Miller, Sylvia Wilkinson, Peter Taylor, Shelby Stephenson, Robie Macauley, and Robert Penn Warren, writer and painter Guy Davenport, the poets Denise Levertov, Gibbons Ruark, Grace DiSanto, Fred Chappell, James Laughlin, Robert Lowell, Robert Bly, Seamus Heaney, James Wright, Wallace Stevens, Richard Wilbur, and Allen Tate, the Italian-American poet and translator Mary de Rachewiltz (daughter of Ezra Pound), and violinist Olga Rudge (Pound's longtime companion), critic Frank Tuohy, and philosopher Donald Davidson. Her papers are in the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University, and the Wilson Special Collections Library of UNC-Chapel Hill.

Literary criticism

She published articles in journals such as The Sewanee Review, PMLA, and The English Journal, often writing about figures she knew personally such as Denise Levertov, Flannery O'Connor, Wallace Stevens, William Carlos Williams, and Randall Jarrell.

Retirement

In 1983 she retired to Assisi Heights in Rochester, Minnesota, and marked her Franciscan diamond jubilee in 1997. She died on February 24, 2003, leaving an unfinished draft of Pilgrimage to the Stars, a book for children about Dante’s Divine Comedy, that is housed in UNC-Chapel Hill's special collections.

References

1. Greene, Dana (2012). "'The Thread': 1982–1984". Denise Levertov: A Poet's Life. University of Illinois Press. p. 146. doi:10.5406/j.ctt3fh3g6.13. ISBN 978-0-252-03710-8.
2. ^ "Sister Mary Bernetta Quinn papers". Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library of Yale University.
3. "Literary Hub Introduces Readers to Sister Mary Bernetta Quinn". The Poetry Foundation and Poetry Magazine. July 27, 2018.
4. ^ "Sister Bernetta Quinn -- Rochester (obituary)". Post Bulletin. February 25, 2003.
5. Quinn, M. Bernetta (1952). Metamorphosis in Modern American Poetry. PhD Dissertation: University of Wisconsin-Madison.
6. ^ Ripatrazone, Nick (2023). "Sister Mary Bernetta Quinn: Woman of Letters". The Habit of Poetry: The Literary Lives of Nuns in Mid-century America. 1517 Media. doi:10.2307/j.ctv2xkjp9p.7. ISBN 978-1-5064-7112-9.
7. Quinn, M. Bernetta (December 28, 1947). "To the Natural World". Charleston Daily Mail (from The American Mercury). p. 4.
8. Quinn, Sister M. Bernetta (1949). "Explanation". College English. 11 (3): 158–158. doi:10.2307/585982. ISSN 0010-0994.
9. Quinn, M. Bernetta (1959). "For Ruth Wallerstein Who Died in England, April 1958". College English. 20 (6): 291–291. doi:10.2307/371909. ISSN 0010-0994 – via JSTOR.
10. Ripatrazone, Nick (July 27, 2018). "The Nun Who Wrote Letters to the Greatest Poets of Her Generation". Literary Hub.
11. ^ "Mary Bernetta Quinn Papers, 1937-1998". Wilson Special Collections Library of UNC-Chapel Hill.
12. Quinn, M. Bernetta (1962). "Children Carrying Wood (after Rouault)". Art Journal. 21 (3): 176. doi:10.2307/774424. ISSN 0004-3249 – via JSTOR.
13. Quinn, Sister M. Bernetta (1963). "In Branches of Spruce [Poem]". The Sewanee Review. 71 (2): 250–250. ISSN 0037-3052.
14. McClave, Heather, ed. (1980). Women Writers of the Short Story: A Collection of Critical Essays. New Jersey: Prentice-Hall. p. 168. ISBN 978-0-13-962415-5.
15. Homberger, Eric (1974). "Review of Ezra Pound: An Introduction to the Poetry". Journal of American Studies. 8 (3): 401–403. ISSN 0021-8758 – via JSTOR.
16. Lensing, George S. (1973). "Review of Ezra Pound, An Introduction to the Poetry". Paideuma. 2 (2): 327–329. ISSN 0090-5674.
17. Burger, Nash K. (July 20, 1958). "In the Field of Religion". The New York Times. pp. BR18.
18. Teresan Nun Writes of Saint's Life, Winona Daily News, July 28, 1963 Page 64.
19. "News of Members, Sister Bernetta Quinn". The CEA Critic. 29 (7): 20–20. April 2, 1967. ISSN 0007-8069 – via JSTOR.
20. Staff (1976). "Notes on Staff and Contributors". Paideuma: Modern and Contemporary Poetry and Poetics. 5 (1): 222. ISSN 0090-5674 – via JSTOR.
21. "Foundation Aids 3 Writers". The New York Times. November 21, 1966. p. 43.
22. Bates, Milton J. "Wallace Stevens' Final Yes: A Response To Sister Bernetta Quinn," Renascence XLI, 4 (Summer 1989).
23. Bacigalupo, Massimo (March 18, 2020). Ezra Pound, Italy, and the Cantos. Clemson University Press. p. 215. doi:10.2307/j.ctvz937kw.19. ISBN 978-1-949979-01-5.
24. Quinn, Sister Bernetta (1971). Levertov, Denise (ed.). "Relearning the Alphabet". Poetry. 118 (2): 97–98. ISSN 0032-2032.
25. Quinn, Sister M. Bernetta, "View from a Rock : The Fiction of Flannery O'Connor and J. F. Powers," Critique, II (Fall, 1958), 19-27.
26. Quinn, M. Bernetta (1952). "Metamorphosis in Wallace Stevens". The Sewanee Review. 60 (2): 230–252. ISSN 0037-3052.
27. Quinn, M. Bernetta (1955). "William Carlos Williams: A Testament of Perpetual Change". PMLA. 70 (3): 292–322. doi:10.2307/460040. ISSN 0030-8129 – via JSTOR.
28. "A Selected, Annotated List of Current Articles on American Literature". American Literature. 57 (3): 541–547. 1985. ISSN 0002-9831.

• 1915 births
• 2003 deaths