Literature

Enterprises Requiring New Clothes By David Daniel Henry David Thoreau, the Sage of Walden Pond, cautions us to beware of all enterprises that require new clothes. With due respect and affection for the man—and I have tons of both—there are times when new threads are called for . . .…

Please Hold for Mr. Marek By David Daniel From the New York Times obituary, March 25, 2020: When Richard Marek was a young editor at Scribner’s in Manhattan in the early 1960s, he was entrusted with one of the literary world’s most important manuscripts, “A Moveable Feast,” Ernest Hemingway’s intimate…

Boarding School Blues: Chapter 37 By Louise Peloquin Never too many, never too much Sister Claudette wasn’t expecting anyone that evening in the two-hundred-square-foot library adjacent to study hall. The elfin nun in her seventies was bent over a thick black tome and didn’t hear Blanche’s footsteps. Her eyes peered…

Redemption By Babz Clough The Massachusetts Correctional Institute (MCI) at Norfolk was built by the inmates in the 1920s as a community-based prison in what was then rural Massachusetts. The prisoners learned how to lay bricks, how to weld, and how to plumb the buildings. They planted the gardens and…

Living Madly – Kairos By Emilie-Noelle Provost The ancient Greeks had two words for time. The first, chronos, refers to sequential measured time: minutes, hours, days, years. It’s the root of English words like synchronous and chronological, and the perception of time we most commonly use and understand. Lately, I’ve…

Boarding School Blues: Chapter 36 By Louise Peloquin Chapter 36: Good vibes A long frantic day was winding down. By the time Blanche finished apologizing to her teachers for skipping class, evening had fallen. Loud grumbling reminded her that an empty tummy had been ignored for too long. When the…

Boarding School Blues: Chapter 35 By Louise Peloquin Chapter 35: Consequences of playing hooky Blanche had no idea how much time had passed when her numbed body slid out of the confessor’s armchair to the floor with a thud. The singing had ceased. “The novices are outa here. Phew! That…

Dry Cleaning Tales By David Daniel   One: Elizabethan Dry Cleaning My old man never went past the tenth grade, but he once gave me a piece of advice that, for all my university education, I’ve been kicking over in my mind ever since. He owned a dry cleaner, the…

The official launch of The Lowell Review 2022 will be held on Saturday, May 7, 2022, from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. at lala books, 189 Market Street, in downtown Lowell. The Lowell Review includes essays, poems, stories, criticism, opinion, and visual art by writers from the Merrimack Valley and…

Boarding School Blues: Chapter 34 By Louise Peloquin Chapter 34: “Run along now” Noël vacation was only two weeks away. Blanche and her friends were plowing through the curriculum from Latin declensions and new vocabulary to the American Revolution timeline including the March 5, 1770 Boston Massacre, the December 16,…