Author Archive
Tom Sexton, New Poem
We have a new poem from one of our far-flung contributors, Tom Sexton in Alaska. Tom is a former Poet Laureate of Alaska and a permanent member of the Lowell High School Alumni Hall of Fame. The photographs below are by Kevin Harkins, made a few years ago when Tom…
Read More »Old Worthen Christmas, 1975
The Old Worthen by Richard Marion (litho print, ink drawing with watercolor, c. 1975, reprinted with permission of the artist). . Old Worthen Christmas . The good way Dan turned his head and dropped three nickels into the bent tambourine of the Salvation Army-man between sips of twenty-five-cent draft and…
Read More »‘Bone in the Throat,” New Poem by Paul Marion
Bone in the Throat (March 2021) By Paul Marion Web photo courtesy of CNBC . The vast container ship Ever Given from Malaysia, Bound for the Netherlands, stuck like a bone in the Throat of the Suez Canal, reminded me of dozens or A hundred random trailer trucks wedged under…
Read More »Tomatoes, Tea, and Beer: A Poem by Charles Nikitopoulos
My friend, teacher, and co-conspirator in Lowell things Charles Nikitopoulos passed away in 2019. He loved poetry and had a long shelf of skinny poetry books at home. He wrote poems when the spirit moved him. He was also a committed gardener with flowers and vegetables in a home garden…
Read More »Please note schedule for author event
SCHEDULE NOTE. I’ll be reading poems in the famous Moses Greeley Parker Lectures series on Saturday, April 29, AT 12 NOON (NOT 2 PM), at the Pollard Memorial Library, 401 Merrimack St, next to Lowell City Hall. The menu will include oldies and new work from books like “Union River”…
Read More »Simon Warner: From Beats to Beatles, an Origin Story on Kerouac’s Birthday
Jack Kerouac was born in the Centralville neighborhood in Lowell on March 12, 1922. He pictures his birth in his novel Doctor Sax, one of his “Lowell books.” He would be 101 years old today. His hometown pulled out all the stops last year for a Centennial celebration with a…
Read More »Rick Harvey: Street Hockey Memories from Dracut, Mass.
About a week ago, the Boston Globe published an excellent article about street hockey culture in Massachusetts as influenced by red-hot Bruins’ teams going back to the Orr-Esposito Era. Matt Porter of the Globe wondered if the surging B’s of today will pump up street hockey for this generation of…
Read More »Spring Training Winter Haven
Our far-flung contributor Jim Provencher in Australia sent us a poem in response to my essay about hometown baseball from a few days ago (“Organized Ball”). Jim spent youthful days in Portland, Maine, playing Babe Ruth League, high school, and American Legion baseball. Here’s what he told us: “It’s weird,…
Read More »Tom Sexton: A New Poem
Tom Sexton, a frequent contributor to this blog, sent us a new poem that he worked on for some time. The length of a poem doesn’t guarantee that the composition was written swiftly. In the title, Yellowhead is the Yellowhead Highway, a main route in Western Canada. I like the…
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