Mary Somerville, a Masters of Arts in English student at Belmont, recently read a selection of her poems at the South Central Modern Language Association in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Her poem “A Chat with Grandfather,” inspired by Robert Lowell’s 1954 collection Life Studies, elevates family history to the level of myth and implicates the speaker in past wrongs.
“Approaching M” ties together stories from Dante and the Old Testament to create a meditation on prayer and the stages of grief. Finally, “Incarnation” and “Deposition,” which are part of a longer poem inspired by the spiritual exercises of St. Ignatius, place the speaker’s life side-by-side with Christ’s in order to bring the speaker to an understanding of her faith.