by Richard Subber | Apr 30, 2023 | Language, My poetry, Poetry
nothing gold can stay…
in excelsis
Such a brazen vault,
each vital hue of morning
spread across my view,
until they fade to drab
in a smaller sky.
October 3, 2019
It was a downright marvelous display of orange, red, russet, gold, and metallic white on dimpled clouds, swept across the early morning sky. I was lucky to see it.
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My poetry. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2023 All rights reserved.
Remember the Tallahatchie Bridge?
Molly Johnson sings it right…
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As with another eye: Poems of exactitude with 55 free verse and haiku poems,
and the rest of my poetry books are for sale on Amazon (paperback and Kindle)
and free in Kindle Unlimited, search Amazon for “Richard Carl Subber”
Your comments are welcome—tell me what you’re thinking.
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by Richard Subber | Apr 27, 2023 | Human Nature, Reflections, Tidbits
The mojo of Belafonte’s blues…
Harry Belafonte
Harold George Bellanfanti Jr. (1927-2023)
requiescat in pace
I realize that Harry Belafonte isn’t everybody’s cup of tea, and the blues may not make you tingle, I get that part, too…
So, just saying, there’s a side of Belafonte you may not know, and that’s the gritty, gutsy, smoke-gets-in-your-eyes, I-gambled-on-your-love kind of blues…
I realize most folks don’t talk like this these days, but Belafonte Sings The Blues is my favorite album of all time, and I do mean “album,” I bought this vinyl 33⅓ record in a cardboard jacket sometime in the early 1960s, when I was in high school. I thought reading the jacket notes was cool, I read them time after time, Nat Hentoff wrote the notes for this one, in the old formal style, very articulate, erudite, Hentoff assumed readers would understand his references to blues structure, jazz origins, and he used big words like “exultantly” and “wryly unconquerable spirit”…it’s a re-education to read the notes again.
I’ve listened to Belafonte’s blues all my adult life, and listening to these cuts again now is a re-generation of the spirit, I know all the words, I can sing the nuances, I experiment with feeling the hurt in “I gambled on your love, baby, and got a losing hand…”
I just slump into Belafonte’s mood when he sings “The Way That I Feel”:
This is the way that I do feel,
I feel it everywhere I go…
I feel just like a engine
that lost its driving wheel.
This is the mojo of the blues, the inconvenient truth, and the inconvenient love.
This is the music of mellow desperation. There is so much innocent sadness in Harry’s voice.
Of course, “the blues” are blue, but there are blues and then there are blues, and there are shades of blue. Belafonte’s blues have the stiffening truth of losing love the second time around and the softening slump of being helpless with the ripening feelings that rebuke and tempt the heart…
Blues is about wanting it, but not having it. Blues is about touching it once or twice, and letting it go.
Blues is not about the courtly idea of unrequited love. Blues is about finding and feeling love, and listening with your heart as your lover’s footsteps fade beyond the door that will not close.
I’ve written some poems to express my sense of Belafonte’s mood in this music, here’s one of them:
“…ain’t no rhyme…
Music ain’t no poem,
you say?
Ain’t singing out no poem,
you say?
…but catch a tune—
you see,
that’s what a poet can do,
like a songwriter, too…
…and hear the notes—
a poet grabs them
from the air,
and makes them into words,
and a singer chews a poem,
and makes a song with his lips,
ain’t no denyin’
ain’t no rhyme for “Belafonte,” see,
no use tryin’,
but he sure can sing the right words…
July 13, 2017
Thanks again, Harry.
Original album, Belafonte Sings The Blues, released by RCA in 1958.
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Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2023 All rights reserved.
A poem about the right thing
…and the lesser incarnation…
“Vanity”
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Writing Rainbows: Poems for Grown-Ups with 59 free verse and haiku poems,
and the rest of my poetry books are for sale on Amazon (paperback and Kindle)
and free in Kindle Unlimited, search Amazon for “Richard Carl Subber”
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by Richard Subber | Apr 22, 2023 | Human Nature, Language, My poetry, Poetry
she inclines to his touch…
in flagrante
So close, but they tremble alone,
shaken by knowledge,
they almost embrace their passion,
each moving to the boundary
without transgression,
but not without hurt.
The master, the worldly one,
the master in his house
filled with the baleful women
of his family,
tempted to the edge
of the precipice…
She, a maid with one name,
the child innocent,
heedless of her woman’s heat,
trespassing unaware
and ever nearer
to the mystery
that she barely understands.
She sits for him,
he moves his brush
but does not avert his gaze.
He beckons,
and she becomes
the girl with a pearl earring,
she feels the lush weight of it,
his fingertip sears her skin,
she inclines to his touch,
the gem at her ear,
and she trembles again
with a start of pain
that thrills but does not fulfill her.
He trembles in a long moment
with forgotten desire,
sees beyond his need
and steps back to his easel,
granting her more time
in the childhood she must learn to leave,
giving her a peace
that will be a bereavement,
a keening memory…
They look again at each other,
mute, apart, yet bound,
their bond unnamed,
without hope,
withering,
without joy…
January 2, 2021
Inspired by Girl with a Pearl Earring (1999) by Tracy Chevalier.
The movie is as good as the book.
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My poetry. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2023 All rights reserved.
Book review: Six Plays by Henrik Ibsen
…his bleak insight into human nature
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My first name was rain: A dreamery of poems with 53 free verse and haiku poems,
and the rest of my poetry books are for sale on Amazon (paperback and Kindle)
and free in Kindle Unlimited, search Amazon for “Richard Carl Subber”
Your comments are welcome—tell me what you’re thinking.
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by Richard Subber | Apr 20, 2023 | Human Nature, Theater and play reviews
feeling truly happy…
Movie review:
Good Will Hunting
1997
Rating R
126 minutes
Starring Robin Williams, Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, Minnie Driver
There are several plot lines in Good Will Hunting, and of course you know about this one: genius janitor solves math problems on blackboard at night and also has fist fights in bars because his life is out of control.
Good Will Hunting is about a lot more than the action in Boston, and the friendships of Southie boys who support each other in a nether world of poverty.
Good Will Hunting is a revelation of what love is all about. Sean (Robin Williams) steers his therapy sessions with Will (Matt Damon) through ever more confessional truths about his own love for his dead wife, and challenges Will to engage with Skylar (Minnie Driver) because she can be part of his good life.
The gotcha scene is Sean and Will on the park bench: in a longish monologue, Sean says to Will “you can’t tell me what it feels like to wake up next to a woman, and feel truly happy,” and Will admits his longing with silence.
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Movie review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2023 All rights reserved.
Home Team: Poems About Baseball (book review)
Edwin Romond hits another homer…
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Seeing far: Selected poems with 47 free verse and haiku poems,
and the rest of my poetry books are for sale on Amazon (paperback and Kindle)
and free in Kindle Unlimited, search Amazon for “Richard Carl Subber”
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by Richard Subber | Apr 18, 2023 | My poetry, Poetry
he measures life in jumps…
Oh, boy!
He is surging energy,
he animates his world
with jaunting stride—
he rules at the piano,
dashing chords
of his invention,
his private chords,
he lives the downbeats,
his music is downbeats,
he piles on the downbeats,
a tap is not enough—
he sparks a conversation,
nothing shy of full roar,
he measures life in jumps
and armfuls
and growling—
May 7, 2019
You might think I wrote this one about your youngest grandson…
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My poetry. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2023 All rights reserved.
Poets talk about poetry
…a red hot bucket of love…
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In other words: Poems for your eyes and ears with 64 free verse and haiku poems,
and the rest of my poetry books are for sale on Amazon (paperback and Kindle)
and free in Kindle Unlimited, search Amazon for “Richard Carl Subber”
Your comments are welcome—tell me what you’re thinking.
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