February 2024
On the Feast of St. Scholastica, February 10, 2024 I received the informal letter of acceptance into the Catholic MFA in Poetry at the University of St. Thomas in Houston. The congratulations came from James Matthew Wilson, co-founder of the program and professor of the Craft of Poetry course I took last fall.
Ever since I recommitted myself to pursue poetry as a path of personal enrichment and creative enjoyment, a series of circumstances has unfolded leading to this.
My discovery of Sr. Madeleva Wolff, CSC, in September 2022 was a turning point. Her work and words rekindled my passion for poetry as a path to Beauty through beauty. My prayer life and ability to find peace through a providential perspective has continued to grow.
When I visited the congregation and college archives at St. Mary's in Notre Dame (May 2023), I was only focused on Madeleva. What I discovered was an intertwined lifeline to countless other Catholic poets and thinkers she was friends with - and through them, even more men, women, priests and religious whose words I cannot keep to myself.
As I stated in my personal narrative applying for the MFA, "I feel called to build bridges between the rich and historic heritage of Catholic poetry, especially on religious and devotional themes, and the people in the pews...
"I want to prepare myself as a missionary of Catholic poetry - bridging beauty to Beauty - working with both the academic and apostolic possibilities of poetry as the inheritance of all Catholics and missionary calling of Catholic poets."
Sitting between the statues of siblings St. Scholastica & St. Benedict at Montecassino, May 2019