A life in love with verse

Tom Quinlan is not a poet. But poetry is at his heart. At 87, he's still teaching, and a lecture is named for him.

Tom Quinlan calls her "one of the great wonders of the Western world."

Her name was Sister Marie St. Joseph, and she was a nun who taught fourth grade at St. Bartholomew's School in Wissinoming. Every Friday afternoon, she would pull out a little green book.

"She would read great poetry, Longfellow and Kipling, people of that nature, and she did it with such depth and such feeling," Quinlan recalls. Every once in a while, when she was called to the office, she would ask a student to take her place. On more than one