Quinn, Mary Bernetta

Sister Bernetta Quinn was born on 19 September 1915 in Lake Geneva, Wisc. She received a B.A degree from the College of St. Teresa in 1942, an M.A. from the Catholic University of America in 1944, and a Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin in 1952. She has taught on the elementary and high school levels, as well as at colleges, including the College of Saint Teresa, Allen University, Norfolk State University, and Saint Andrews Presbyterian College.

An accomplished poet in her own right, Sister Bernetta's two primary areas of scholarship are the Catholic Church and modernist poetry, especially the life and work of Ezra Pound and Randall Jarrell. Among her publications are Ezra Pound: An Introduction to the Poetry; Give Me Souls: A Life of Raphael Cardinal Merry del Val; The Metamorphic Tradition in Modern Poetry; To God Alone the Glory: A Life of Saint Bonaventure; Randall Jarrell; and Dancing in Stillness, a book of poems. Her scholarly articles and poems have appeared in the PMLA, Shenandoah; Contemporary Literature; College English ; and the Sewanee Review .

From the guide to the Mary Bernetta Quinn Papers, ., 1937-1998, (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Library. Southern Historical Collection.)

Sister Bernetta Quinn was born Viola Roselyn Quinn in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin in September 1915. She entered the Franciscan Congregation of Our Lady of Lourdes in 1934 and made profession of vows three years later. Sister Mary Bernetta Quinn earned a B.A. from the College of St. Teresa in 1942, an M.A. in English from Catholic University in 1944, and a doctorate in English from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1952.

Sister Quinn 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 Tokyo, and Allen University. From 1954 to 1967 she was a member of the English Department faculty at the College of St. Teresa in Winona, Wisconsin.

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.

In 1983 she retired to Assisi Heights in Rochester, Minnesota, and that same year published a small collection of poems, --dancing in stillness . In 1997 she celebrated her diamond jubilee as a Franciscan Sister. Sister Mary Bernetta Quinn died at Assisi Heights on February 24, 2003.

From the guide to the Sister Mary Bernetta Quinn papers, 1948-1981, (Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library)