Jessica Powers-Out of silence, music:
Leckey, Dolores R
Jessica Powers: Out ol silence, music It was a funeral full of poems. On August 18,1988 poet Jessica Powers, aged eighty-three, her spirit "newly freed from earth" entered into her homecoming, as...
...DOLORES R. LECKEY Dolores R. Leckey is executive director of the National Conference ofCarholw Bishops' Secretarial im Lain and Family Life...
...During her lifetime...
...On August 18,1988 poet Jessica Powers, aged eighty-three, her spirit "newly freed from earth" entered into her homecoming, as one of her poems describes the experience of death...
...Her New York years honed Jessica Powers's unique poetic gifts...
...In 1941, she left the bright lights of New York for the enclosure of CarmeJ...
...Anton Pegis and his wife, also a writer...
...She is writing a biography of Jessica Powers...
...They also awakened her slumbering vocation to religious life...
...One morning it was there...
...Weep not that visit of a brief duration...
...Jessica Powers's work appeared in Poetry, Spirit, Harper's Magazine, the New York Times, America, the Washington Post, and Commonweal, which published more than fifty of her poems, before and after her entrance into Carroel...
...But she didn't go alone...
...There, in silence and solitude she explored the secrets of the soul and fashioned those secrets, into poems notable for their metaphysical truth and arresting images...
...Her mystic songs go on...
...first in Milwaukee and later in Pewaukee...
...It settled down across the darkened air To a gray branch in a dull orchard hidden...
...made her way to New York City, attracted by the intellectual stimulation of the city and the artistic support of the newly formed Catholic Poetry Society of America...
...For forty-seven years she lived as Sister Miriam of die Holy Spirit in the Carmel of the Mother of God...
...Her publications include several volumes of poetry, the most recent being The House at Rest...
...Not even the grave can render Jessica Powers a silent poet...
...It came from meadows seasonless and boundless Into your orchard for a summer stay, And then one night you saw it lift on soundless White wings and float away...
...You cried in your delight, what is this bird That in one space of music seems to speak The note and the note's word...
...The Muse followed and remained with hep in the cloister for forty-seven years...
...She studied for a year at Marquette University, worked as a secretary in Chicago, went back to work on the farm after her mother's death, and eventually, in 1936...
...You are a guest yourself and you must know That in you lie the instincts of migration, And where the bird went, one day you will go...
...an extensive collection is presently in the works...
...Feathers of luster and a polished beak...
...Jessica Powers was born on a farm in Mauston, Wisconsin in 1905...
...It was these poems that echoed through the homily, the thanksgiving, the graveside prayers, and the memories of those who had gathered to say good-by to her...
...For a Silent Poet" appearedin Commonweal in 1940: Song was a wild bird and it came unbidden...
...The women shared domestic duties and care for the Pegis's small children, so enabling one another to enjoy uninterrupted blocks of writing time...
...For a while she lived with Dr...
Vol. 115 • September 1988 • No. 16
