by Richard Subber | Jul 29, 2023 | Language, My poetry, Poetry
take another look…
Show time
The final scene again:
the brash star of day
livens the broad sky,
all blaze and streak
in slow tumble of light,
and vaunting gush
and thrash of cloud…
the cascade and fleeting splash of shadows
betrays the deepening blush of night…
the star of day takes center stage
and blooms across the sky,
and now: the curtain call…
and see!
the house lights look like stars.
April 10, 2018
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My poetry. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2023 All rights reserved.
Book review: Shakespeare’s Wife
Germaine Greer went overboard a bit…
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Above all: Poems of dawn and more with 73 free verse 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 | Jul 27, 2023 | Book reviews, Books, History
swords, and dragons, and boasting…
Book review:
Beowulf
Seamus Heaney, trans.
New York, W. W. Norton and Company, 2000
213 pages
A long time ago, a thousand years, give or take, an anonymous Anglo-Saxon poet writing in the Old English language completed a 3,182-line poem we call “Beowulf.”
Just about everyone thinks it’s a classic.
It hasn’t been adapted for TV yet, and there are a number of reasons for that. It’s heroic, but the modern English translation is dramatically flat.
It’s about tough guys with swords, and dragons, and mead halls, and manly boasting, and such.
Beowulf is everything it’s made out to be, and not much more.
I’m happy to assume that it was a more thrilling read and a more entrancing tale in the 9th or 10th century, or whenever it was first written and taken on the road by the storytellers.
Beowulf is a whole lot better than TV.
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2023 All rights reserved.
Book review:
The American Revolution: A History
The “Founders” were afraid
of “democracy”…
by Gordon S. Wood
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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 | Jul 25, 2023 | Human Nature, My poetry, Poetry, Reflections
the waitress knows my name…
The corner booth
Maybe you wonder how I can spend
so much time in this corner booth…
It’s easy, really, I have nowhere else I need to be,
this place is nicer than my place,
and I see people here,
years ago I met my friend here
almost every day,
I miss his cheerful contemplation
of so many things.
I’m alone now,
but not lonely,
I think about the times of my life
and the people I shared it with,
we shared good times in this booth,
and we shared the sadness we couldn’t avoid,
it’s a comfort being here,
the waitress knows my name, of course,
and she knows what I like to eat…
I didn’t think I would become
the old man in the corner booth.
You don’t think you’re going to be like me.
March 26, 2023
Inspired by “Old Man Eating Alone in a Chinese Restaurant”
by Billy Collins, as published in “Poem of the Day,” August 21, 2022,
by Poetry Foundation
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My poetry. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2023 All rights reserved.
We Were Soldiers Once…and Young
…too much death (book review)
Lt. Gen. Harold G. Moore (ret.)
and Joseph L. Galloway
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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 | Jul 23, 2023 | Book reviews, Books, Human Nature
different, but not less…
Book review:
An Anthropologist on Mars:
Seven Paradoxical Tales
by Oliver Sacks
New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1995
328 pages
If you don’t know about Temple Grandin, you should read An Anthropologist on Mars.
In his trademark style—crisp, intuitive, surprising, deeply empathic—
Oliver Sacks tells you as much as you’re capable of knowing
about seven different kinds of people who are different, but not less.
Temple Grandin—make that Dr. Temple Grandin—is an autistic animal scientist who has designed the infrastructure for half of the cattle processing facilities (feedlots and slaughterhouses) in the U.S. She has a lot of realistic and informed stuff to say about autism and the folks whose lives have been made different by this condition.
Sacks spends some time with Grandin and learns as much as he can.
You can read this book and do the same.
Autistic people are different, and they are oh so human.
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2023 All rights reserved.
Book review: Forced Founders
by Woody Holton
The so-called “Founding Fathers”
weren’t the only ones
who helped to shape our independence…
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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”
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by Richard Subber | Jul 20, 2023 | Joys of reading, Language, Tidbits
the right words
“He is hasped
and hooped
and hirpling with pain…”
Beowulf describing the wounded dragon, Grendel
Beowulf, p. 65
Seamus Heaney, trans.
New York, W. W. Norton and Company, 2000
Beowulf, the Old English epic poem, was written more than a thousand years ago. No one knows who wrote it.
He or she had a way with words.
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Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2023 All rights reserved.
Book review: Cleopatra: A Life
…don’t even think
about Gordon Gekko…
by Stacy Schiff
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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”
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