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Web image by anthony92931 courtesy of commons.wikimedia Along with Henri Marchand’s “fruitcake” essay and my “Oranges at Christmas” essay, the re-appearance of this poem has become part of the Christmas tradition for our blog. I wrote the first draft of this poem in 1976, and worked on it on-and-off for a long…
Read More »This essay was first heard on the “Sunrise” radio program of WUML, 92.5 FM, at UMass Lowell around 2007. Executive producer Chris Dunlap assembled writers in the area for the daily essay feature, a popular component of the morning public affairs show. I’ve shared this essay with rh.com readers for several…
Read More »Sharing the spotlight today at the Lowell Historical Society meeting in the community room at the Pollard Memorial Library. The topic was “Lowell After World War II,” and the program drew a full house of more than 70 attendees. We talked about our new books, ‘”Lowell: Images of Modern…
Read More »Web image courtesy of Wikimedia I reached into the vault for a poem from this “time of the season.” —PM . Look At a Dry Leaf . A dry leaf is a physical map: River beds are sap routes Forking off the prime vein. The underside’s not printed, But the…
Read More »With the days getting shorter and pumpkins and mums showing up at farmstands, I thought it was time to re-run this prose poem about the fall, time, and a sense of community. The setting is Shaw Farm in Dracut about twenty-five years ago.—PM . Bottled Milk All seems right on…
Read More »With all the walking and talking about walking going on in the city, I thought I’d share this poem from 1984, which originally appeared in my book STRONG PLACE: POEMS ’74-’84 and was reprinted in WHAT IS THE CITY? in 2006. In the ’80s, I had a Sunday routine of…
Read More »Here’s a throwback thing to the pioneer days of festival-making in Renaissance Lowell. This was “Expo ’79, Art/Music” at Lowell Memorial Auditorium. Lowell CityFair was part of the federal jobs program (imagine that) called C.E.T.A. (Comprehensive Employment and Training Act) wherein a dozen or so Lowell artists were hired to…
Read More »For the Fourth of July, Independence Day, here’s a poem from the nation’s capital. I wrote this prose poem after a family trip to Washington, D.C., in the summer of 2004. There were John Kerry-for-President signs in the windows. GOP posters for “W,” too. Barack Obama was a figure on…
Read More »Lowell Walks/Public Art by Rosemary Noon At the invitation of Dick Howe, my husband, Paul, and I led a group of 110 people on a 90-minute tour of the Lowell Public Art Collection this past Saturday morning. It was the second installment in the Lowell Walks series for the summer.…
Read More »I’ve posted this poem from 1978 on the blog before. It was written soon after the experience that provided the brief story thread. In those days, I was constantly on the lookout for images and incidents that could feed a new composition. I wanted to write, write, write. It’s a slight piece, but has…
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