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Lowell-rooted poet Joe Donahue is one of the subjects of an essay titled “Apocalypticism: A Way Forward for Poetry” in the Chicago Review. Read the essay by Peter O’Leary here. Donahue has spent years mastering long serial poems that combine elements of mysticism, esotericism, protest, and the alienation of the…
Read More »American Kennel Club lists most popular dog breeds in the nation. This one looks like our guy at home. Read about it on boston.com.
Read More »Death Comes Home in the Morning . Rosemary said the Shuttle had exploded. Donna turned on the office radio. News came in the same tone as the spoken news From Dallas when President Kennedy was shot. The pub TV played without commercials. The flying machine shattered. It wasn’t the biggest loss…
Read More »The Hubble Space Telescope has produced another wonder, a view of what may be the oldest galaxy in the universe yet to be seen by humans. Read the NYTimes article here, and get the paper if you want more. It is a smudge of light only a tiny fraction of the size of…
Read More »Picking up on Tony Sampas’s documentary photographs of Cote’s Market on Salem Street, here’s an excerpt from a poem by Marie Louise St. Onge that was published in the book “French Class: French Canadian-American Writings on Identity, Culture, and Place” (Loom Press, 1999).—PM . from One Vegetable and Silence for…
Read More »The NYTimes today reports on dismal results in a recent national test on science knowledge administered to 4th, 8th, and 12th graders (the 12th grade sample is much smaller than the elementary school samples). Read the results here, and get the NYT if you want more. But the results showed…
Read More »NYTimes columnist David Brooks today says it’s imperative that 21st-century America be a talent magnet to stay at the front of the pack in the global economic and social long-distance race. For our purposes on this blog, substitute Lowell and/or Merrimack Valley every time he mentions America, and think about…
Read More »“. . . There was at the time of the Civil War, a group of young men and women hardly more than boys and girls, who frequented our house, played croquet on the lawn and bowled in the long, low bowling alley; old when I remember it, and covered from…
Read More »Tom Sexton sent a new poem from the coast of Maine where he’s wintering more easily than in the Alaskan icebox. He’s working on a new book of poems. Lowell (and all that that contains) is the subject. Look for the new collection in the fall. In the meantime, mark…
Read More »In the Boston Globe Magazine today, the Boston Uncommon feature highlights author Andre Dubus III of UMass Lowell and Newbury because he has a new book due out in February, “Townie,” a memoir about growing up and boxing and writing in Haverhill. Read the Q & A here, and get the Globe…
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