The Literary Lives of Nuns Discussed

By, Lydia Grossman ’24, student correspondent

Author and culture editor of Image Journal, Nick Ripatrazone, discussed the relationship between nuns and poetry at The University of Scranton’s Gail and Francis Slattery Center for Ignatian Humanities Lecture. Ripatrazone presented “The Habit of Poetry: The Literary Lives of Nuns in Mid-century America,” which is also the title of his most recent book, at the Nov. 10 lecture on campus.

Ripatrazone, who analyzed the lives and literature of various nuns, specifically from the twentieth century, began his talk with the poem “Nuns in the Quarterlies,” by Sister Mary Gilbert. Ripatrazone explained the poem and its themes of womanhood, unattainability and Catholicism. His favorite line, “Nuns are the fictions by whom we verify the usual contradictions,” he said has stuck with him.

Ripatrazone attributed his interest in the lives of nuns to archived sources from literary magazines. He explained that he continuously came across poems by Catholic nuns and sisters, like Sister Mary Gilbert.

“The poems that they wrote were devotional and traditional, but they were also stylistic, satirical and subversive. They wrote with a measured skill, and they wrote for public and often secular audiences,” Ripatrazone said.

He shared his analysis of the Catholic tradition and the hidden work of nuns, with a particular focus on the stereotyping and marginalization placed upon them.

Ripatrazone explained how poetry provided nuns with the ability to express themselves and experience freedom from the confinements of the nunnery.

“For a group of nuns and sisters, poetry was where they sought to reconcile order and the absurd, perhaps it is their greatest accomplishment that they discovered that they need not choose one and reject the other,” Ripatrazone said.