"a strange gift"

Mary Norbert Körte, Michael McClure, Mary Catherine Kinniburgh, Ammiel Alcalay, Megan Mangum, Kate Tarlow Morgan, Stephon Lawrence, Kendra Sullivan, City University of New York. Center for the Humanities, Woodberry Poetry Room (Harvard College Library)

"Poet Mary Norbert Korte attended the Berkeley Poetry Conference in 1965, which marked a "conversion" of sorts: away from her life as a nun in the Dominican Catholic Sisterhood of San Rafael, and towards a life of poetry and activism in the Bay Area. After lively dialogue with Jack Spicer, she began corresponding with other poets including Diane di Prima, Lew Welch, and Michael McClure, often sharing poetry in secret. In January 1967, McClure received a package; Korte wrote a series of poems in response to his work, Ghost Tantras, inscribing them directly on the pages of her copy. The responses, published here for the first time, reveal a poetics steeped in mysticism and lyricism, written during a time in which Korte's understanding of religious love was increasingly affected by her participation in environmental and antiwar activism."--Supplied by publisher.