Mary Norbert Korte

Mary Norbert Korte
1934-2022

Mary Norbert Korte, poet known for her role in the San Francisco Renaissance and Beat poetry movements and environmental activist, passed away on November 14th. She was 88 years old.
Korte was born in 1934 between Oakland and Berkeley. She became a nun in 1951, entering the Dominican Catholic Sisterhood in San Rafael. She attended the Dominican College of San Rafael followed by the Catholic University of America for her bachelor's and Master's Degrees, both in Latin.
In 1965, Korte attended the Berkeley Poetry Conference, a gathering which would become known as a watershed moment in the history of American poetry. She met poets Robert Duncan, Charles Olson, Robert Creeley, Jack Spicer and Lew Welch, among others, and met Robert Hawley, publisher of Oyez Press in Berkeley. Korte's first collection of poems, Hymn to the Gentle Sun, was published by Oyez in 1967. The following year, 1968, Korte left the Dominican order and embarked on the lay life of the poet. Korte befriended poets Allen Ginsberg, Lenore Kandel, Diane di Prima, and many others, and published several more books.
In 1973, Korte answered an ad to serve as a caretaker at Sanctuary Station on the bank of the Noyo River outside Willits. Soon after moving to Mendocino county, Korte became the Northern California Coordinator for Poets in the Schools, a non-profit initiative that brought published poets in to teach poetry to children in public elementary schools. She also taught writing and literature at the elementary school for the Coyote Valley Band of Pomo Indians. In 1979, Korte learned that a large tract of old-growth redwood forest at the headwaters of the Noyo River was slated to be logged, and vowed to do everything in her power to save this forest.
She led many direct and indirect actions in efforts to save old growth redwoods. Through a thirty-year legal process and a final deal with the Mendocino Land Trust, Korte succeeded in saving the old-growth redwoods she originally set out to save. Korte's papers are held at the University of Rochester in Rochester, NY. A collection of Korte's poetry, Jumping into the American River: New and Selected Poems, will be published by Argos Books/TKS Press in 2023. Mary Korte will be remembered as tough, intelligent, compassionate and incredibly loving and loved by all who knew her.