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Writing about the upcoming Bread & Roses Festival in Lawrence sent me to the vault for this poem written in the late 1970s, when I first encountered the political puppeteers and bakers in Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom. Coincidentally for our blog community here, this poem was selected by Tom Sexton (before I knew who…
Read More »Don’t miss Lowell’s own Shakespeare in the Park experience this Sunday, Aug. 29, at 4 p.m., when the New England Shakespeare Festival brings its populist brand of the Bard’s work to Boarding House Park on French Street. The play is “Twelfth Night,” originally titled “Twelfe Night or What You Will,” a “madcap comedy…
Read More »I wrote this poem in the mid-’70s, when I was trying to find my way down the writing path. I published it in my first pamphlet (chapbook) of poems. It’s raining tonight, but we’ve had some fine summer days and sundowns this season. This is typical early-stage writing that comes…
Read More »This is one of my favorite poems by Michael Casey, Lowell High School alumnus and now Andover resident, who is the award-winning author of a classic book of poems about the Vietnam War. Michael and Nicholas Samaras (also with Lowell connections) will be reading together in Lowell next spring in a program sponsored…
Read More »Support local businesses. Can I say this more plainly in the lingering Great Recession? I perambulated the immediate neighborhood late this afternoon, from the JAM district to the edge of Back Central and back to the South Common Historic District. I’d been meaning for a while to go to the Brazilian “bakery…
Read More »We sometimes forget that the Merrimack Valley is a bi-state region with deep historical roots. The flow of the mighty Merrimack River has been a unifying force for the culture, heritage and livelihood of its residents since time of the Pentacook tribes through the Industrial Revolution to this modern era of highway,…
Read More »The recent posts about digging for Irish roots in the Acre and Hollywood gossip about the Ward movie “The Fighter” reminded me of Tom Sexton’s poem from his book “A Clock With No Hands.”—PM . Lowell’s Irish Micky Ward . Round 2. Ward’s left eye is already cut, but he…
Read More »The NYT today has an update on the Bill and Melinda Gates/Warren Buffet trolling-for-billionaires initiative. They are having a great deal of success in getting people to pledge to give at least half of their riches to charity. Read the article here, and consider buying a copy of the NYT if…
Read More »The Visit . When I saw her gnarled fingers, shaved head, eyes like knots of wood, I didn’t say anything. He waved her out of the room, asked us to sit down, served iced drinks. He talked about ’75 when he worked security at the embassy in Phnom Penh and…
Read More »Now available at Barnes and Noble Downtown, Welles Emporium, Guy Lefebvre’s Lowell Gallery, Brew’d Awakening, National Park Visitor Center Gift Shop, Monkey’s Ice Cream & Gifts, Dharma Buns, and online at www.loompress.com and www.amazon.com At many of these same fine businesses, readers will find Loom Press book titles, including those by Steve…
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