"First, especially in the earliest collections, there was a predominance of pieces by the Sisters, and these works often centered on God or some other aspect of spiritual life. Identity (Sr. M. Borromeo, 1965) is an ideal example of this difference, while still dealing with imagery, in keeping with my focus. This piece describes God through creative methods, such as 'Sun-splashed October,' and describes the responding human being as 'His canvas' ... "

"...In these earlier works, there is also an increased tendency toward traditional poems describing nature. Pieces such as Clouds, Gazelle, and To Kathy, With Love and Admiration all deal with the traditional and image laden subjects of some aspect of the natural world. Clouds (Sr. Maria Concepta, 1965) exhibits the use of image in creating a work that is a simple metaphor, suggesting that the cloud is a 'low swinging mobile.'” The piece employs a traditional tone and style."

“The war had left the country divided. Students wanted the new president to concentrate on unification. They wanted the war to end, and the killing to stop. Most importantly, the students wanted America’s men to come home."

~ Eileen Macon

"Towards the end of the 1960's and beginning of the 1970's Inscape poetry began to explore an increased number of themes that were not as traditional. These pieces used imagery to describe internal subjects, like loneliness and mental turmoil. There were also a larger number of submissions by lay people. The images used in these works began to stray from the familiar, and grew more unexpected.

The piece delves beyond the traditional themes of nature, God, love, etc. and begins to consider themes that, while being more commonly addressed in modern poetry, had been avoided in earlier works."

"Some of the themes, such as institutional violence, were new to the time, but others, such as friendship, have been written about for many years.

Bhony Farley’s 1972 poem An Irish Folktale told the story of another aspect of institutional violence - in this case, English aggression in Ireland.The Old Grey Mére by Marcie Marcotte was about the friendship between two nuns, Reunions by Sister Margaret Mary, CSJ, was about two friends getting together for a ten-year graduation reunion, and Lucy . . . With Love by Sister M. Amadeus, CSA, was about three friends preparing for a fourth friend’s funeral-though the story doesn’t say anything about a funeral until the end."

~ Mary Ondercin

"Similar to the writings from the 40's, the edition of INSCAPE from 1965 was very tradition in theme and style. The two most prevalent themes were religion and nature. Most often, these themes were intertwined. The next issue I looked at was one from 1967. Although it was only two years later, the themes and style portrayed in this issue were drastically different than the issue from 1965. In this issue, I found poems with titles such as Insanity. These pieces dealt more with introspection and self realization. As the 60's progressed and the world around Ursuline College changed, the writings became more abstract, continually focusing on the independent person, and not the world at large.

Perhaps it was the falling economy or the ending of the cold war, whatever the reason, it was clear to see that spirits were not at their highest in the 80's."

"However, as I skimmed my way through the years you could clearly note that the topics at hand were starting to get a little more friendly and playful. That darker themes slowly started to ebb away and they would turn to more humorous sounding topics or had some line of humor along the lines of seemingly serious text.

Sr. Cynthia Glavac of OSU, another several year contributor to INSCAPE, showed this prominently. In an earlier issue she writes a poem called “Death: an interlude” which is a recounting of the loss of a person at the age of 17, and the following year she makes a small sketch called “Student Teaching 440" which is a comical approach of the teachers view of trying to get the student to pay attention to her literature, in the form of a class objective list."

~ Chris Petruccio