Poetry as "A Kind of Prayer" for Greenburgh Poet Laureate

Sister Alice V. Feeley's new mission is clear.

"In a broad sense, I'd like to open up poetry, to have people delight in poetry and not feel it's something for experts or esoteric," said  Dobbs Ferry's Sister Alice, who was recently named to a two-year term as the town of Greenburgh's second poet laureate.  (Who knew that the Town of Greenburgh even had a poet laureate? Go ahead, name the national poet laureate.*).

One of her mandates as the town's poet laureate is to give poetry a more public presence in the community at large. That's not such a difficult charge for Sister Alice, a member of the Sisters of Divine Compassion, who spent a good portion of her career teaching English at Good Counsel Academy in White Plains as well as at other schools in the Bronx. Plus Sister Alice was an English major in college who earned a Master's in English from Catholic University in Washington, D.C.

Her poems have been published in magazines such as: America, POET and Inkwell and have been included in the anthology, Let the Poets Speak.

Sister Alice's poetry often "begins with something visual in nature, or an image of art or piece of music," she said. "Where it goes is more universal than particular. It's something that connects with experience. It's more lyrical. It's accessible, rather than opaque."

Some of her favorite poets are Gerard Manley Hopkins, T.S. Eliot, Seamus Heaney, Mary Oliver and William Butler Yeats, among others.

"Certainly Scripture was an influence," said Sister Alice, citing such texts as the Psalms, the book of Job, wisdom literature and the Gospels.

 While many of her poems celebrate or observe something in nature ("Birch in Late November," "Cherry Tree in Spring"), there's also striking imagery in a poem like "Sabbath Gates," inspired by the orange swathed art installation by the artists Christo and Jeanne Claude that were in Central Park in 2005.

She writes, "These Sabbath gates/light a way to give us sight/for where and who we are./They swathe a holy people/paused for brief celebration/in the land of the living."

While Sister Alice is still figuring out her responsibilities as poet laureate, she confessed that the unexpected honor has definitely made her more mindful of the need to practice the discipline of writing poetry on a regular basis.

"I try to write every morning, for 10 minutes to half an hour," she said.

Sister Alice's path toward poetry was perhaps more circuitous than it is for those whose day jobs are in academia or the literary world. Born and raised in Brooklyn, Sister Alice assumed several leadership positions in her order, including being the director of novices and serving as president. Sister Alice also worked for Catholic Charities, Pace University and Iona College, where she earned a degree in pastoral counseling.

While the honor of being selected as Greenburgh's poet laureate was unexpected, Sister Alice suspects that she made it to the short list because of a poem she had read in 2003, at the dedication of a September 11 memorial wall on Central Park Avenue.

 "One of the jobs of poet laureate is to make poetry visible," said Sister Alice, who mentioned Greenburgh's poetry contest and poetry workshops as ways to generate awareness of and interest in poetry. She'd like to explore other ways to increase outreach efforts, like a web site, but laughingly admitted, " If I were technologically more skilled, I'd like to find a way to get people more engaged with poetry. I'm not there yet."

And poetry is only a part of Sister Alice's busy life. She works four days a week as a chaplain in the Pastoral Care Department at St. Cabrini Nursing Home in Dobbs Ferry, ministering to the spiritual needs of the elderly and infirm residents there.

For Sister Alice, the callings are similar.

"Writing poetry is a kind of prayer," she said. "It comes from the same place."

*The United State poet laureate is W.S.Merwin