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…
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…
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…
Opening Day, Eagle River, Alaska By Mike McCormick Stepping into the bracing air, I yank on my gloves and stride across snow filled ruts that gleam like fresh baselines in the narrow strip of dirt driveway. Hundreds of red capped birds chatter like anxious fans as I duck into my…
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”…
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,…
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…
The imagery of this poem by Frank Wagner is grim but it ends on an uplifting note. It also echoes an emerging movement in burial practice: Natural Organic Reduction, also known as human composting. It’s an option in six states and there’s a bill pending in the state legislature to…
A new poem from our regular contributor Tom Sexton, poet of the Atlantic and Pacific sides of our continent. A former Poet Laureate of Alaska, Tom is on the list of distinguished alumni of Lowell High School, the one in Massachusetts. (FYI, Lowell High School in San Francisco, named for…
Our frequent contributor Tom Sexton sent a new poem from the coast of Maine where he is spending the winter—on break from Alaska. Tom is the author of many collections of poetry including Cummiskey Alley: New and Selected Lowell Poems and Li Bai Rides a Celestial Dolphin Home. He is a…
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