by Richard Subber | Nov 18, 2023 | Language, My poetry, Poetry, Reflections
s’agit d’amour…
Nuit
La nuit me dit,
”Mon cher, qu’as tu?”
et je réponds,
“Rien…mais oui,
encore je pense à elle
qui est ma chère depuis…”
Ma vie en toute,
mon âme, ma femme,
le même pour moi…
S’agit d’amour, cher noir,
la nuit qui est tout seul…
et moi aussi.
1968
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My poetry. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2023 All rights reserved.
“Tear it up,” says Kurt Vonnegut
“Write a six line poem, about anything…
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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”
Your comments are welcome—tell me what you’re thinking.
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by Richard Subber | Nov 16, 2023 | Book reviews, Books, Joys of reading
a new take on the Western…
Book review:
The Complete Western Stories of Elmore Leonard
New York: William Morris, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers, 2004
528 pages
I’m late to the game of reading Elmore Leonard, and I confess right here that I’m not a big fan of the broadly defined “Western” genre, excepting of course the “must reads” like “The Outcasts of Poker Flat” and “To Build a Fire” and “The Call of the Wild.”
Even so, I’m engaged with Leonard’s short story style, and I plan to return to The Complete Western Stories of Elmore Leonard—his 30 Western shorts including possibly familiar titles like “Three-Ten to Yuma” and “Moment of Vengeance” and “Only Good Ones.”
The prose is direct, realistic, and dialogue-rich, and there is legitimate suspense that gives individuality to each story.
Try a few.
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2023 All rights reserved.
“…watchers in the crystal sphere…”
”Night watch,” a poem
“…friends who pass the time…”
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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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by Richard Subber | Nov 14, 2023 | Language, My poetry, Poetry
where do you belong?
natura
I march in the hills,
I sleep in grassy vales,
the proud peaks relent, betimes,
they hold my footsteps
in high places,
and I look down again
on sylvan slopes
that beck to me
and open to my passing through,
I wet my feet in waters
with no name,
I rest in bosky dells,
and I sing a forest song…
I belong to all this beauty.
July 10, 2023
inspired by “Ascent” by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, as published July 9, 2023, on her website, A Hundred Falling Veils
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My poetry. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2023 All rights reserved.
Oops, Columbus didn’t “discover” America
…but he got close…
–
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 | Nov 12, 2023 | American history, Book reviews, Books, History
…where the buffalo stopped roaming…
Book review:
Crazy Horse
by Larry McMurtry (1936-2021)
Bibliophile, novelist, Pulitzer Prize winner
New York: Penguin Group, 1999 (Penguin Lives series)
148 pages
Apparently it is Larry McMurtry’s goal in life to avoid writing everything I don’t like.
Crazy Horse is a gem: crisp, appealing, well-informed, in McMurtry’s signature style—crafted words, no nonsense, literate. This is a candid assessment of the life and times of Ta-Shunka-Witco (“His horse is crazy”) (c1840-1877).
If there had been no relentless assault against the American Indians by white America and its government, Crazy Horse might have been an anonymous, eccentric figure among the Oglala Sioux. His compatriots probably understood him about as well as we do—that is, not much.
From several points of view, in the middle of the 19th century and now, Crazy Horse was a loner and a lone eagle. McMurtry does a commendable job of trying to see the world as Crazy Horse saw it. The world as Crazy Horse wanted it to be was shriveling around him during his entire life.
It’s too bad that Crazy Horse wasn’t born in an earlier, less contentious, more agreeable time. It’s too bad that he couldn’t simply have made his home where the buffalo roamed.
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2023 All rights reserved.
Book review: The Lost History of Stars
Dave Boling’s delicate story
about a brutal war
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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 | Nov 7, 2023 | Human Nature, My poetry, Poetry
the yearling ahead of the herd
Taking a walk
There she goes again.
She’s running ahead, beyond my reach,
she stops and waits if I call loud enough,
but she doesn’t shout back.
Taking a walk
isn’t something she needs to do
in measured steps with me.
It’s the daring.
I think she’s not testing limits,
she’s learning what to do,
and how to do it,
before a limit comes into view,
before it makes her mindful.
It’s the dashing.
It’s not escape, it’s exuberance.
It’s a style of open plains loping,
she doesn’t see the sidewalk
that I’m following,
she’s following the instinct
of the yearling ahead of the herd.
It’s the dancing.
She runs, she skips,
she jumps, she hears a music
that has nothing to do
with my cautions
or my grown-up obligation
or my protective love.
It’s the doing.
I understand that she is
reaping new experiences in her life.
There is no danger outside my imagination.
The coyotes are out of range,
I’m sure of it and she depends on me.
She is a dasher, a dancer and a prancer,
and it is my joy
to scramble to catch up to her again.
April 22, 2017
My oldest granddaughter likes being out in front. She has never actually ranged far enough ahead to be out of my sight. I don’t know if she would go that far. I guess she wouldn’t do it deliberately. I don’t really think she might be attacked by a dog rushing out from the next home she passes…I can’t get that completely out of my mind. I can guess at the horizons she’s pushing back in her mind. She won’t understand the joy/fear in my mind until she’s a lot older. There are three more grandkids in line behind her. I’m learning to walk faster.
My poem “Taking a walk” was published in my second collection of 47 poems, Seeing far: Selected poems.
You can buy it on Amazon (paperback and Kindle),
or get it free in Kindle Unlimited, search for “Richard Carl Subber”
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My poetry. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2023 All rights reserved.
Movie review: Same Time, Next Year
all-American adultery, oh yeah…
–
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”
Your comments are welcome—tell me what you’re thinking.
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