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The following extracts are from four issues of the “Artifacts” newsletter of the Art Alive! artists cooperative that operated in Lowell in the early 1980s (formed some time before June 1980). I recently found these documents in my files, an incomplete set of Volume 1 of “Artifacts.” The four issues…
Read More »I learned this poem from a friend in the mid-1970s. We were part of a bi-weekly writing workshop at the Andover, Mass., public library called The Poets’ Lab. The group stayed together for three or four years, branching out to do readings in most of the towns and cities in…
Read More »Here’s a poem from the vault to go with the Civil War program that my co-blogger Dick will be involved with in April. I wrote this poem after visiting my brother David and his family in south central Virginia in the 1970s. He had recently taken a position as a…
Read More »Entertainment titan David Geffen will give $100 million to renovate one performance hall at Lincoln Center in New York City. The total cost of the project is estimated at $500M. Read the NYTimes story here. While certain individuals in the city and the Greater Lowell community as a whole have…
Read More »With the 40th anniversary of the fall of Saigon in late April 1975 getting near, the media reports and conversation in our own city are turning more often to that awful time in Southeast Asia. The suffering all around was immense. I was in my junior year at the then-University…
Read More »Here’s a Spring-loaded poem from our far-flung correspondent at the Poetry Desk on the coast of northeast Maine, the faithful Tom Sexton. Our man Down East is counting on mud season to soften the base paths before the Red Sox open at Fenway.—PM . Goldfinches at a Feeder A…
Read More »Happy B-day to the old man writer of Centralville who was old at six years and never got younger because he could see over the edge of the horizon and got a glimpse of the void, making it more or less indefensible to get a job in a factory when…
Read More »One of our far-flung correspondents, Tom Sexton, checked in with a new poem from the apple yards of Maine, where he is counting icicles and writing a memoir about growing up in Lowell. In the great tradition of apple poems by Lawrence High School-grad Robert Frost and others, Tom gives…
Read More »Thanks to “Merrimack Valley Magazine” for the kind words about “Mill Power” in a review in the new March/April 2015 issue. Here’s the link for the “Mill Power” review And here’s the link for the MVM site and several articles and features that are online. Please look for and buy…
Read More »If a speech can make a difference, this is one. President Obama did well in Selma, Alabama, yesterday. “Our march is not over.” “Moral imagination.” “The single most powerful word in our democracy is ‘we’.” “What has not changed is the imperative of citizenship.” “Give voice to the voiceless.” This…
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