American Poets Corner Accolade for Flannery O'Connor
Southern literary legend Flannery O’Connor has been included amongst the greats of American letters honoured in The American Poets Corner at the Cathedral of St John the Divine in New York City.
In a special ceremony held on Sunday November 2nd at which members of the author’s family were present, the congregation gathered for a traditional Evensong that included readings of O’Connor’s work and the unveiling of a commemorative stone bearing her name and a quote sourced from her extensive collection of correspondence, that reads:
‘I can, with one eye squinted take it all as a blessing.’
Celebrations of O’Connor’s life and works continued the following evening, where Cathedral poet in residence Marilyn Nelson was joined in discussion by authors, actors, critics and scholars.
Established in 1984, The American Poets Corner is modelled after the famed similar alcove in London’s Westminster Abbey, and seeks to honour American writers, poets, dramatists and essayists in the same way as its British counterpart.
Each year, the Cathedral’s poet in residence along with a committee of electors, of which Eudora Welty was once a member, select the next writer to be honoured.
O’Connor joins fellow renowned Southern author William Faulkner, who was inducted into Poets Corner in 1989 and the playwright Tennessee Williams, who was inducted more recently in 2009.
“The decision, because we feel it is important, is difficult” says current poet in residence Marilyn Nelson on this year’s choice of O’Connor.
“She is a brilliant writer, and an interesting thinker; perhaps a mystic.”
Georgia born Mary Flannery O’Connor, whose Southern-Gothic storytelling has gained her continuing acclaim the world over penned two novels, two short story collections, essays and a prayer journal during a career cut tragically short by her death from lupus at the age of 39.
Her story A Good Man is Hard To Find, published in 1955 remains an often cited example of mastery of the short story form.
In the booklet produced by the Cathedral of St John the Divine to mark O’Connor’s induction, Marilyn Nelson writes:
“She has always seemed to me a writer who from her small corner saw very clearly the foibles of our crazy human race… Like her character, The Misfit, in A Good Man is Hard To Find, I’ve believed that most of us would be good people if ‘it had been somebody there to shoot (us) every minute of (our) lives,’ And like Flannery O’Connor, I am sustained by faith in the inexplicable grace by which God loves us anyway.”
All photos courtesy of St John the Divine Cathedral, New York City.
