Charles Bukowski: On the Beat Margins

Charles Bukowski (1920-1994) was a German-American poet and writer who was a contemporary of Jack Kerouac but never a part of the Beat Generation writer scene. Still, Bukowski, who was known as the “Poet of Skid Row” and was called by Time magazine “the laureate of American lowlife” had a…

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New Essay by Susan April

Susan April sent us a new essay about a time when she was growing up in Lowell in the Highlands neighborhood. I don’t want to give away the turn in the narrative, so I’ll leave it here. Susan is a past contributor to this publication. Her work has appeared in…

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Nature Comes to Lowell

For weeks I had noted the increasing height of the plants shooting up from the untended compost pile in the corner of our backyard. With 20-plus years of accumulated organic matter, there was no telling what was growing. One recent morning when I let our 12-year old Yellow Lab Ivy…

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“Towards a Wild Ecology of Being” by Clare Mulvany

Located primarily in the northwest of County Clare, the Burren, is one of the world’s most unique landscapes. It means “great rock” in Irish (Boireann), and is dominated by thick successions of sedimentary rocks, often compared to a lunar landscape. In the following essay and series of photographs, Clare Mulvany take…

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Did Someone Say ‘Coffee’?

Did Someone Say ‘Coffee’? By Jack McDonough Early in my married life I made coffee in a Proctor Silex which, if I’m not mistaken, consisted of an arrangement whereby the coffee flowed from one glass section to another, up or down, I don’t remember. I probably used Maxwell House coffee…

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A Different Kind of Dying

A Different Kind of Dying By David Daniel Once a year, in late September, the town holds a drop-off at the DPW garage for used electronics. In advance of the event, notices appear in the community weekly newspaper, and on flyers affixed to telephone poles: UNWANTED TVS, COMPUTER MONITORS, PHONES…

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New Poem: Dave Robinson

Dave Robinson is the author of the prodigious Sweeney in Effable: Five Books About Enjoying the View. This poem is from his new poetry manuscript, Nocturne in ‘White’ or ‘Yellow’. Enough by Dave Robinson   A pair of reddish things unearthed beside green slabs of moss. Their wide threshold of…

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