Nick Ripatrazone writes in his new book about Jessica Powers, an American nun and mystical Catholic poet.
‘I should like to go to New York.” Jessica Powers (1905-88) spent the decade following her mother’s death in 1925 as a homemaker, tending to the family farmhouse in Mauston, Wisconsin, to support her brothers. With the marriage of her second brother, she was fin- ally free to pursue her dream: moving to the centre of contemporary poetry in America.
Despite the demanding nature of her dom- estic work, Powers had published more than 50 poems, including work in Spirit, the maga- zine of the Catholic Poetry Society. Establish- ed in 1931, the society’s purpose was the “fos- tering and developing of further strength in the body of Catholic culture and literature throughout the nation”. It included Jesuit priests, poet Aline Kilmer (wife of famed Catholic poet Joyce Kilmer) and Sister Mary Madeleva Wolff, a university president.
