Arrangement: alphabetical.

Letters between Sister Bernetta Quinn and important individuals or those with substantive correspondence. Most folders are labeled with the correspondent's name, but there are some that are labeled by subject.

Much of the correspondence is personal in nature, but a good portion of it concerns Sister Bernetta's scholarship, particularly her work on Randall Jarrell and Ezra Pound. Jarrell materials include letters solicited by Sister Bernetta in the course of gathering information for her Twayne Series book called Randall Jarrell. Among the correspondents are Jarrell's wives Mackie and Mary, as well as his students, colleagues, and contemporaries, many of whom offered anecdotes and remembrances of the man and the poet. Mackie Jarrell's letters serve mostly as background to Jarrell's family and early adulthood. Sister Bernetta and Mary Jarrell became close friends, and there is personal exchange in letters between them, as well as references to Randall Jarrell. There are also some letters of Charles Jarrell to his mother and to his brother Randall.

Letters relating to Ezra Pound include those of Sister Bernetta's friend Mary De Rachewiltz, Pound's daughter. De Rachewiltz, who has taken an active role in Pound scholarship, mentioned her father in several letters. The references, however, relate to Pound's work, not to the man himself. There are also a number of letters from Olga Rudge, a music scholar and Pound's longtime companion (pictures of Rudge are enclosed with several De Rachewiltz letters).

Also included are one letter from Richard Wilbur; a copy of a letter from Donald Davidson to Suzanne Ferguson; letters from Mackie and Mary Jarrell to Suzanne Ferguson; and letters from Peter Taylor, Sylvia Wilkinson, Doris Betts, Robie Macauley, Heather Ross Miller, Gibbons Ruark, Shelby Stephenson, Ron Bayes, Carolyn Kizer, Denise Levertov, Robert Penn Warren, and Seamus Heaney.

Many of these letters concern Sister Bernetta's interest in seminars, grants, and teaching positions. Letters from Grace DiSanto and Fred Chappell relate to DiSanto's long illness. Letters from Regina O'Connor contain a few references to her daughter Flannery. Other writers represented in this series include Chuck Sullivan, John Stone, and Sister Raphael Tilton.

Folders for Ronald Reagan, Malcolm Cowley, Michael Dukakis, and Alex Haley contain items of minor importance.

Arrangement: alphabetical.

Letters from individuals who are identified by first name only, many of whom are or were connected with the Catholic Church.

Arrangement: alphabetical.

Miscellaneous letters, some of which is categorized by subject. Professional letters are chiefly about grant applications, job interviews, and related matters. Religious letters are on religious themes.

Arrangement: alphabetical.

Scholarly writings by Sister Bernetta about T. S. Eliot, Wallace Stevens, and others, but focusing on Randall Jarrell. The Jarrell criticism includes articles by Sister Bernetta, as well as material for an apparently unpublished book on Jarrell (folders 277-279). Also included are two audio cassette tapes of lectures by Sister Bernetta.

Copies of poems by Sister Bernetta, many of them written in the 1980s. This subseries is organized by compositi on stage, with holograph drafts are first, followed by poems written in journals, then poems with both holograph and typescript drafts, offprints of published poems, and finally miscellaneous typescript poems. Poems in their published form can be found in Series 2.6. Also included is an audio cassette tape of Kay Mullen reading from Sister Bernetta's Dancing in Stillness.

Book reviews written by Sister Bernetta for newspapers and journals. Book reviews in their published form can be found in Series 2.6.

Journals and meditations, most with religious themes. Much of the material focuses on Sister Bernetta's relationship to God. There are, however, several journals recording trips Sister Bernetta made to Japan. Among these journal entries are included postcards and newspaper clippings documenting her travel experiences. Also included in several of the volumes are notes and scholarly material.

In the 1980s, Sister Bernetta was preparing a prose adaptation for children of Dante's Divine Comedy. These five notebooks contain early drafts of this project.

Bibliographies, letters to editors, and lectures given by Sister Bernetta from the early 1970s to the late 1980s. The bibliographies document her poetic and critical production over the course of her career. The letters to editors are to both newspapers and scholarly journals. Among the topics covered are capital punishment and Ezra Pound. Lectures are entitled "What Literature Affirms and How," "Portrait of a Distinguished Alumna: Sonia Gernes," and "Image and Idea: The Collage in Freshman Composition."

Articles, poems, book reviews, and books by Sister Bernetta in published form. Included are her books To God Alone the Glory: A Life of Saint Bonaventure; Give Me Souls: A Life of Raphael Cardinal Merry del Val ; and Randall Jarrell (Twayne Series). Also included are books in which her articles appear, such as Modern American Poetry ("Paterson: Listening to Landscape") and Sylvia Plath: New Views on the Poetry ("Medusan Imagery in Sylvia Plath"). Also included are essays, book reviews, and poems in Pembroke Magazine, the Georgia Review, Shenandoah, Saint Andrews Review, and other journals. Dancing in Stillness, a chapbook of Sister Bernetta's poems, is also included.