Poet Catherine Strisik has a new book, “Thousand-Cricket Song,” about Cambodia and the culture of the country in the post-genocide era. She will be in Lowell on Saturday, July 31, at 2 p.m., reading from her work and signing books at the UMass Lowell Barnes & Noble Downtown Bookstore on…
Nancye Tuttle of the SUN broke the news on June 10 that Lowell Memorial Auditorium will present writer, radioman extraordinaire, and poetry enthusiast Garrison Keillor on March 6, 2011. As far as I can recall Keillor has never played Lowell or the Merrimack Valley, so that’s a great get. Let’s be sure Garrison…
I missed taking note of Bastille Day (July 14), but my family has been following Le Tour de France on the Versus Channel. The coverage is first-rate—and worth watching as a travelogue as much as for a bicycle race. In honor of the French (mostly French Canadian) roots of many…
Following is the third and final section of my poem “Colorado,” which I hope our readers have enjoyed. I’m working on a new collection of poems and prose sketches whose title is “Stars in the Dark.” The book includes older and new writings, most of which are not related to…
Following is the second section of my poem “Colorado,” which I introduced yesterday. The Blood of Christ or Sangre de Cristo Mountains are in southern Colorado and northern New Mexico. The range is either the beginning of the Rocky Mountains on the way north or the last stretch of the Rockies heading south.…
This being July, I’m offering section 1 of a three-part poem titled “Colorado,” which I wrote in pieces during the early 1980s, when I spent a fair amount of time out west. I later combined the individual poems because together they made a stronger composition.—PM Colorado 1. Heat flashes over the High…
What is Bloomsday? Fom Today in Dublin: Bloomsday is a commemoration observed annually on 16 June in Dublin to celebrate the life of Irish writer James Joyce and relive the events in his novel Ulysses, all of which took place on the same day in Dublin in 1904. The name…
A selection of the letters exchanged by Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg between 1944 and 1963 has been published by Viking Penguin. Bill Morgan, long associated with Ginsberg, and David Stanford, who worked on Kerouac projects at Viking (he was my editor at Viking for “Atop an Underwood,” too), co-edited…
Poet Tom Sexton has a new book due next March: “I Think Again of Those Ancient Chinese Poets.” The publisher is University of Alaska Press. Watch for Tom to be in the area next spring for a reading or two.
David Brooks in today’s NYTimes argues the case on behalf of the value of history, literature, and the traditional liberal arts education. In a time when technology oftens appears to be de-linked from humanity, his case has merit. Read Brooks’ column here, and consider subscribing to the NYT if you…