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Haiku by Sean Thibodeau (April 6)
iPhone trills a new message. Dread. My old dentist wanting to confirm. . —Sean Thibodeau (c) 2011
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1986 Lowell Sesquicentennial Poem
With the celebration of the city’s 175th anniversary coming up next week, I was asked to share on this blog the poem I was commissioned to write by the city’s Sesquicentennial Committee in 1986. I read the poem at the opening ceremony on the plaza at the JFK Civic Center.…
Read More »Haiku by Matsuo Basho, April 5
Matsuo Basho (1644-1694) wrote during the Edo Period in Japan. He is considered the master poet of the time. In celebration of National Poetry Month, this blog is hosting the 3rd Annual Community Haiku Project. Readers are invited to send no more than two haiku at a time for consideration…
Read More »Haiku by Ray LaPorte (April 4)
. Budget crisis looms Nuke radiation drifts here As Red Sox hit swoon . —Ray LaPorte (c) 2011
Read More »Tom Sexton in Lowell
I attended today’s Parker Lecture at the Lowell National Park Visitor Center and very much enjoyed listening along with about 50 others to Tom Sexton read many of his Lowell poems. The topics, characters, and language involved transported me back to younger days making the room sound much like a…
Read More »Sunday, May 22, Book Event: Save the Date
Sunday, May 22, is a day to mark on your calendars if you are interested in literature, Lowell, the creative economy, poetry, history, America, and more. If the planets line up correctly, there should be four new books released that day by Kate Hanson Foster, Paul Hudon, Bob Forrant &…
Read More »Poet Tom Sexton Reading in Lowell: April 3 & April 4
Tom Sexton, a Lowell High graduate and Alumni Hall of Famer and former Poet Laureate of Alaska, will read from his work in progress, which is a collection of sonnets about growing up in Lowell in the 1940s and 50s. He will also read from his new book, “I Think…
Read More »‘A Part of History’ by Phil Riley
The late Phil Riley of Lowell was an English teacher and cross-country and track coach at Stoneham High School for 22 years. His wife, Johanna C. Bohan Riley, recently spoke to me about his deep affection for Lowell and literature, particularly poetry. He passed away about a year ago. I asked…
Read More »Acclaimed Poets Coming to Lowell in April
Scholar Mason Drukman on Individualism & Community
To support communal feelings, a nation must seek to preserve certain cherished institutions as well as engage in creative innovation; it must value collective responsibility as well as individual incentive; it must espouse goals over and above those of economic self-aggrandizement. If a commitment to the ends of economic individualism…
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