06/01/2023
Poet Mary Norbert Korte, who died last November at age 88, was known as a beatnik nun who left the Dominican Order to join San Francisco’s poetry scene, and as an off-grid eco-warrior who preserved more than 400 acres of old-growth redwood forest in Mendocino County, Calif. Though Korte operated under the mainstream radar, she won counterculture literary admirers. In Jumping into the American River: New and Selected Poems, Vol. 1, due out June 1 from Argos Books and TKS Books, coeditors Iris Cushing and Jason Weiss reintroduce Korte’s place-based poetry and her remarkable life in Northern California.
Mary Norbert Korte, a beatnik nun who left the Dominican Order to join San Francisco’s poetry scene and an off-grid eco-warrior who preserved more than 400 acres of old-growth redwood forest, died last November at age 88. Indie publishing is keeping her work alive.
