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…
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 .…
The shame of the result in the court case about the future of the Pawtucket Falls Dam is the lack of trade-off and balancing of interests in the court’s decision. Enel is already generating green energy and making money on the hydro-power system, otherwise they would not be operating in…
I lived in Pawtucketville for several years, from the late 1970s to early ’80s. I often write in response to a place or to make sense of a place, and that neighborhood was no different. I lived on the top floor of an old triple-decker, a sea-green block on a…
Poet Ezra Pound said, “Poetry [or literature] is news that stays news,” and the doctor-poet of Paterson, New Jersey, William Carlos Williams, believed that the news worthwhile receiving can be found in poems. Following is an excerpt from a long poem that includes Williams’s well known lines about poetry and…
Kate Hanson Foster graduated from UMass Lowell and gained her MFA in Poetry from the Bennington Writing Seminars. She lives in Groton, Mass. Her poems have appeared in California Quarterly, Comstock Review, and other literary magazines. Her first book “Mid Drift,” published by Loom Press in 2011, was selected that…
Whether watching men releasing caged birds at dawn in New York City or a ladder of cranes rising from a field in Manitoba, Tom Sexton is a keen observer of the interconnectedness of the natural and human worlds. The former Alaska poet laureate takes to the road in…
Our far-flung contributor Tom Sexton is wintering Down East, tending to his poems and books. He sent this composition about the young women workers back in the day. Tom’s latest book is “A Ladder of Cranes” (University of Alaska Press, distributed by University of Chicago Press). Congratulations to Tom, one…
Marlborough Woods . Brown in their winter skins, they rise up, Lean pointers, borders of the wilderness. After January rain, glass branches rock, Melting and re-freezing as air shifts from fog to chill. Across the shelf of Mount Monadnock, Under a white flannel sun, Wind blows the snow like cold…
From the Pacific Rim Desk of the RichardHowe.com blog comes a new poem by our far-flung correspondent Tom Sexton, who recently traversed North America lengthwise to open shop for several months Down East. We welcome Tom and his wife, Sharyn, back to New England for a spell. This is Tom…