Something of a minor literary renaissance happened in midcentury America from an unexpected source. Nuns were writing poetry and being published and praised in secular venues. Their literary moment has faded into history, but it is worth revisiting. The literary creations of poetic priests like Gerard Manley Hopkins, S.J., and Robert Southwell, S.J. have been both a blessing and a burden--creating the sense that male clergy alone have written substantial work. But Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, the 17th century Mexican poet-nun famous for her iconic verses and trailblazing sense of the role of religious creative women, set the literary precedent for pious work from women. Sister Mary Bernetta Quinn, a critic and poet, was praised by Flannery O'Connor and kept long correspondences with many of the best poets of her generation. Carmelite nun Sister Jessica Powers published widely. Sister M. Madeleva Wolff, poet and university president, transformed Catholic higher education. The Habit of Poetry brings together these women and others. Their poetry is devotional and deft, complex and contemplative. This mid-20th century renaissance by nun poets is more than a literary footnote; it is a case study in how women negotiate tradition and individual creativity.

The six essays collected in this volume are a selection from a number of papers which were given at a one-day colloquium on 'Art, Literature and the Spanish Civil War' which was held in Westfield College on 18 July 1986, precisely fifty years to the day after Franco's military coup in the Canary Islands, which was destined to have such a decisive effect on the course of Spanish history. Though this date subsequently became a Francoist celebration - the so-called 'Dia del Alzamiento' (Day of the Uprising) - the papers collected here do not demonstrate a Francoist bias. The overall approach is intertextual and interdisciplinary, thereby stressing the international nature of the artistic response to the war. For the benefit of the English reader, all foreign quotations are followed by an English translation.

Recognized as one of the most influential Latin American writers of the twentieth century, José Lezama Lima, born in Cuba in 1910, is associated with the Latin American neo-baroque and has influenced several generations of writers in and out of Cuba, including such prominent poets as Severo Sarduy and Néstor Perlongher. Lezama Lima's vision of America in a continental sense stands at the fertile confluence of indigenous, African, and European influences. A crucial experimental writer, he has been known in English chiefly for his novel Paradiso, while little of his poetry has been translated. This anthology is a comprehensive introduction to Lezama Lima's poetry. It presents for the first time in English a generous selection of his poems, as well as an interview, essays, and critical work on his poetics. Ernesto Livon-Grosman has selected elegant and precise translations by James Irby, G.J. Racz, Nathaniel Tarn, and Roberto Tejada. His insightful introduction places the poet in the wider context of Cuban and Latin American cultural history.

A Place in the Sun? examines the work of Cuban women writers in the 20th century. Catherine Davies explores how Cuban women's literature has contributed to constructions of a collective identity.