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This poem dates from December 1977 and was reprinted in my recent book What Is the City? At the time I wrote this I was trying different forms for my poems and pushing myself to write in a more open way with lots of unusual images and unexpected language. The original…
Read More »I just watched a wonderful documentary on PBS about the offical photographer of President Obama, Pete Souza, whose work was captured by a National Geographic Society team for about a year, culminating in the passage of the health care reform bill last spring. The program offers a look inside the…
Read More »I was out with our family’s Boston Terrier this morning, kicking through the leaves on the South Common, and thought of this poem. Here’s an exerpt from New Hampshire poet Donald Hall’s poem “Kicking the Leaves.” Click here to read the entire poem.—PM Kicking the Leaves (an excerpt) . .…
Read More »Veterans Day falls on November 11th to mark the anniversary of the armistice ending the First World War. Perhaps no other conflict in western history has generated more acknowledgement of the savageness of our species. The furnaces of the Holocaust represent the result of a society gone mad, led by…
Read More »This blog is in good historical company as a publication that regularly features poetry. Read Ralph Waldo Emerson’s four poems in the first issue of the Atlantic magazine, published on November 9, 1857.
Read More »From the NYTimes website, here are several poems in which the writers speak to the daylight savings time experience. It’s a big deal when the NYT gives this kind of premium space to poets. The contributors are well known.
Read More »Nothing Gold Can Stay . Nature’s first green is gold, Her hardest hue to hold. Her early leaf’s a flower; But only so an hour. Then leaf subsides to leaf. So Eden sank to grief, So dawn goes down to day. Nothing gold can stay. . —Robert Frost (from “New…
Read More »In honor of the victory by the San Francisco Giants in this year’s World Series, former Lowell Sun reporter Dave Perry sent along this contribution: I dreamt of Willie Mays last night. It was the first time in many years Mays’ slightly bowlegged visage showed up in my sleep, but…
Read More »Legendary San Francisco poet and founder of City Lights Bookstore and publishing company Lawrence Ferlinghetti is a baseball fan, too. The card-carrying Beat writer and publisher of Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl” and several books by Jack Kerouac, including “Book of Dreams” and “Pomes All Sizes,” has a most fitting poem for this…
Read More »Today’s NYTimes includes this article about the Harlem-based Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture of the NY Public Library acquiring a massive archive of papers from author and performer Maya Angelou. The story prompted me to recall Maya Angelou’s visit to Lowell in 1989 as a guest of Middlesex Community College. Following is…
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