Poem of the Week: “In Her Silent Cloister” by Leontia Flynn

“In Her Silent Cloister” by Leontia Flynn imagines the 12th-Century nun, writer, and philosopher Héloïse du Paraclet, possibly alluding in the final stanza to her correspondence and affair with the theologian Peter Abelard. Written from Flynn’s experience as a new mother, this poem explores a common theme in the collection Taking Liberties, asking where inner lives intersect with the outer world and under what circumstances creativity may flourish, especially for women writers. In other poems considering Emily Dickinson and Nina Simone, Flynn explores whether solitude is essential to creative life, and how women might carve out space to create their art amid the demands of life and motherhood.

In Her Silent Cloister

In her silent cloister
Héloïse du Paraclet
considered the squall
and endless squalor of babies,

from which scenario
she had removed herself.
The trees by the Seine
stirred and put off their sleep.

All poems, she thought,
are written in the springtime:
leaf, slow bud
then sudden quickening.

And all are written
in obscurity,
from the exile
back to the city:

the long and very carefully-written letter —
like an arrow, shot
into the future — always opened
out of sight.

—Leontia Flynn, from Taking Liberties (2026)