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With increasing discussion about renovating the Smith Baker Center near Lowell City Hall, I went to the vault to get this essay written in the moment in 1989. Let’s hope we can revive the Smith Baker Center and offer the public inspiring events like Maya Angelou’s appearance there.—PM . A Day That…
Read More »I’ve posted this poem from 1978 on the blog before. It was written soon after the experience that provided the brief story thread. In those days, I was constantly on the lookout for images and incidents that could feed a new composition. I wanted to write, write, write. It’s a slight piece, but has…
Read More »While not born in Lowell – Lucy Larcom is recognized as a woman of Lowell and important part of the Lowell story. Lucy Larcom lived a full life after her Lowell experience as a writer and teacher first in Illinois then back in Massachusetts. She went on to become one…
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 »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 »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 »It is still freakin’ cold out there, so I’m posting another Caribbean composition from the vault.—PM . Hibiscus Lane 1. One nimble gecko scaling a mosquito net remains the only lizard we’ve seen in a week on the island whose old name, Hewanorra, means “where the iguana is found.” Purple…
Read More »In the early 2000s, my family was fortunate enough to visit the island of St. Lucia in the Caribbean Sea for several Februarys in a row. This morning, I was looking for something to post that would transport readers out of the Lowell snow zone for a few minutes.—PM .…
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