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Bill O’Connell is a past contributor to this blog. He is the author of the poetry collections When We Were All Still Alive and Sakonnet Point. His forthcoming book Tarifa Moon (Lost Valley Press) includes poems drawn from recent European travel along with family and neighborhood stories. He lives in…
Read More »Frost Land On the small balcony with purple morning glories and magenta zinnias in pots, I see two eagles flowing west to east, lower to higher, doing whatever they do at a time like this, but definitely showing themselves off in a faded blue flannel sky with a…
Read More »In the August issue of The Atlantic magazine, Carol Frost has a short poem about being alive titled “The Scrubbed and Simple Moon,” which is a big deal because the magazine typically publishes one poem per issue. Twelve poems a year. I’m sure the poetry editor gets thousands of compositions…
Read More »Ann Fox Chandonnet In recent years, I have been able to connect with the creative world of my Lowell State / Class of 1964 classmate writer/ poet Ann Fox Chandonnet, through her editor at Loom Press – my longtime friend and colleague Paul Marion. Connections were hit and miss and…
Read More »Olympia restaurant by Michael Casey here with a high school friend Panos and the restaurant is in the Greek neighborhood in Lowell and in a far corner are two elderly ladies Panos excuses himself and goes to say hello to these homegirls and the ladies eventually recognize him as…
Read More »Poet Maggie Dietz of UMass Lowell In her weekly Substack newsletter, ‘New England Literary News,’ writer Nina MacLaughlin shares her view of a new collection of poems by Maggie Dietz of the UMass Lowell Dept. of English. Readers can subscribe to New England Literary News here. Here is the brief…
Read More »Born in Lowell, poet Matt W. Miller has published several award-winning collections of poetry. He lives with his family in southern New Hampshire. The prestigious journal Tupelo Quarterly features new work by Matt in the current issue. Here’s the link to the page (note the small arrows to advance to…
Read More »This prose poem appears in my book What Is the City? (2006), which is out of print but sometimes available in used condition on internet sites. Jackie Brady was a champion boxer in Lowell, Mass., in the 1960s. The local scene from the 1980s described here predates the easing of…
Read More »New poem with Lowell setting in the latest issue of The Café Review in Portland, Maine, which has been around for a long time. I have three poems in this issue, and have been in the magazine previously. Kudos to them for keeping the magazine alive. The CR has interviews,…
Read More »Poet Tom Sexton (photo by Kevin Harkins) Thanks to Michael Burwell of Alaska for sending us two recent commentaries on the late Tom Sexton and his final book of poems, “Dark Cloud in Isabel Pass” (Loom Press, 2025). Michael’s review-essay appears in “Cirque” literary magazine of Alaska and Nancy Lord’s…
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