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I enjoyed watching and listening to the inauguration of President Obama this time even more than the first time. In 2009, we knew we were seeing a history-making event. His election both represented and caused a developmental leap in the American psyche. I never thought his re-election would be easy.…
Read More »In 1996, I led a creative writing workshop for the Hellenic Culture Society of Lowell. For the first session I asked the participants to do an exercise. Everyone would contribute one line on the theme of his or her mother’s kitchen. When we had all the individual lines, I took…
Read More »Writer and painter Chath PierSath, a former Lowell resident who still lives in the region, crossed the Thai-Cambodian border in 1979 with members of his family on the way to Aranyaprathet Refugee Camp. With the help of his brother and aunt, he and his sister came to America in 1981,…
Read More »The following poem is from Paul Hudon’s big poem-a-day book written in 2005-2006, “All in Good Time” (Loom Press, 2011). At various times, Paul has been a professor of history at Merrimack College, curator of pre-industrial artifacts at the Merrimack Valley Textile Museum (now the American Textile History Museum in Lowell),…
Read More »Dust of Snow By Robert Frost (1874–1963) . The way a crow Shook down on me The dust of snow From a hemlock tree Has given my heart A change of mood And saved some part Of a day I had rued. . According to the Robert Frost encyclopedia online, this poem was first…
Read More »Joe Donahue (Joseph Donahue of Duke University in North Carolina and the literary constellation Lowelliana) has a poem in the Dec. 24 issue of The Nation magazine, one of the few remaining nationally distributed publications that regularly make room for poets–and thus a fantastic location for widespread viewing of literary compositions.…
Read More »I wrote the first draft of this poem in 1976, and worked on it on and off for a long time. I had in mind the extensive outdoor lighting displays in Dracut (the town) and Lowell, but, especially as it evolved, the dense array of Christmas decorations in Lowell’s Pawtucketville…
Read More »“The Bridge Review: Merrimack Valley Culture” is an online bio-regional magazine that was launched in the late 1990s. After publishing several issues, the original editors rested. The beauty of the web, of course, is that the previous issues remained available to interested readers. With the coming of the 2012 Bread…
Read More »Seeing Tony’s stunning sunset image posted yesterday reminded me of this poem, which I wrote in the 1980s. I’ve always been fascinated by the sundown skies over the river channel looking west from Pawtucketville, particularly the vantage point from the O’Donnell Bridge that connects Mammoth Rd and School St. There’s…
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