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Tom Sexton is the author of Cummiskey Alley: New and Selected Lowell Poems, which will be published by Loom Press next week. To order, please visit www.loompress.com Autumn by Tom Sexton What is it about a late autumn afternoon with birch and sumac leaves drifting down, that…
Read More »Throughout October, Trasna will focus on the Celtic festival of Samhain, known better to Americans as Halloween. The holiday originated in Ireland and celebrates that time of year when the veil between this world and the next grows thin, and life seems more mysterious. This week we feature a blog piece by writer Orla…
Read More »Spurred by our Texas friend Frank Wagner’s essay about meeting Patti Smith in the late 1970s, an encounter with a cranky, thirty-something, tightly wound artist, we’re reprising this review-essay about Patti Smith’s most recent book, Year of the Monkey, just out in paperback. Note that former Lowell Sun journalists Nancye…
Read More »Frank Wagner of south Texas is an occasional contributor to this publication. Today he writes about meeting the singer-songwriter Patti Smith after a 1978 performance in south Texas. Smith was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1978 but she’s also a poet and author. In 2010,…
Read More »Throughout October, Trasna will focus on the Celtic festival of Samhain, known better to Americans as Halloween. The holiday originated in Ireland and celebrates that time of year when the veil between this world and the next grows thin, and life seems more mysterious. This week we feature award-winning poet, photographer, and filmmaker, Mark…
Read More »Oktoberfest is a 200-year old traditional festival held for 17 days from mid-September until early October in Munich, Germany. Its main feature is beer – about 7 million liters of it each year – along with traditional food (wurst, chicken, pretzels, salted radishes), folk costumes, music and amusement park rides.…
Read More »From his home hub in downtown Lowell, writer, scholar, and teacher George Chigas covers a lot of territory on foot. Like Henry Thoreau who “traveled a good deal in Concord,” George will send us occasional reports on his movements and what he sees, hears, and feels. Walking Home from Market…
Read More »Located primarily in the northwest of County Clare, the Burren, is one of the world’s most unique landscapes. It means “great rock” in Irish (Boireann), and is dominated by thick successions of sedimentary rocks, often compared to a lunar landscape. In the following essay and series of photographs, Clare Mulvany take…
Read More »Did Someone Say ‘Coffee’? By Jack McDonough Early in my married life I made coffee in a Proctor Silex which, if I’m not mistaken, consisted of an arrangement whereby the coffee flowed from one glass section to another, up or down, I don’t remember. I probably used Maxwell House coffee…
Read More »The Kerouac Book River “The Kerouac Book River is inspired by the legendary Merrimack and Concord rivers, which run through the author’s hometown of Lowell, Massachusetts. At the “source” of the river is the canon of first editions, beginning in 1950 with The Town and the City. Plentiful waters stir to…
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