by Richard Subber | Nov 19, 2024 | Human Nature, My poetry, Poetry, Reflections
76 trombones…
Grace
As we gather here
we learn once more
that each of us is one,
that we hear our own music,
and yet we know
that 76 trombones
sound better than one.
We learn once more
that we are family,
and we like each other.
Food probably was the first thing
that humans shared.
It’s a nice tradition.
Let’s be grateful
for our good food
and our good fellowship.
Savannah, GA
November 24, 2022
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My poetry. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2024 All rights reserved.
Book review: The Bridges of Madison County
If you’re looking for
highly stoked eroticism
and high-rolling lives
that throw off sparks when they touch,
look elsewhere.
by Robert Waller
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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 | Nov 17, 2024 | Book reviews, Books, Joys of reading
…good storytelling…
Book review:
The Sea-Hawk
by Rafael Sabatini (1875-1950)
New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1924
366 pages
Sabatini always invites the reader to get comfortable, to enjoy reading for literate pleasure, to relish good storytelling.
The Sea-Hawk has enough swash and buckle for any Sabatini fan.
Sir Oliver is a Cornish lord, a superman, and a wannabe corsair who can more or less bend steel with his bare hounds. Rosamund is the gentle lady of his heart’s desire. They get together at the end, but they have some swamps and fire and soul-searching to go through before they get to that entirely predictable end.
No reader—with or without delectable experience of Sabatini’s literary style—could fail to imagine the final outcome after reading just a few pages.
This inevitable foreknowledge is part of the appeal. You know how it’s going to turn out. You know that Sir Oliver and Rosamund will be smitten with self-doubt, and enlarged by courageous idealism, and sustained by everlasting love.
Sabatini makes it entirely comfortable to enjoy every minute of it, and he has the civilized decency to avoid any mention of heaving bosoms. The reader’s imagination has its own work to do.
p.s. The Sea-Hawk is a lot like Sabatini’s Scaramouche, except there’s water.
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2024 All rights reserved.
Book review: The Snow Goose
…sensual drama, eminently poetic…
by Paul Gallico
–
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, 2024 | My poetry, Poetry, Reflections
that entish slang…
ken
The words of stones
come soft,
and there are whispers,
and the birds’ chirping
is a refrain,
and the trees talk
mostly to themselves
in their entish slang…
Are we listening?
Do we give them moments
to speak as they will?
Can we trust the words
that we barely understand?
Do we need to hear
the stones and their mountains?
Shall we learn from these scant words
a new way of knowing?
Shall we hear the worlds
that exist with us,
persist without us?
Shall we allow those words
to fill our ears and minds and hearts?
Is there new meaning
so near to our ken?
June 20, 2024
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My poetry. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2024 All rights reserved.
“The beginning is always today.”
(quote, Mary Shelley)
so get started…
–
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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by Richard Subber | Nov 12, 2024 | Book reviews, Books, History, Human Nature, World history
a corpse in the mirror
Book review:
Night
by Elie Wiesel (1928-2016)
Buchenwald survivor
Stella Rodway, trans.
New York: Bantam Books, 1958
109 pages
In Night, Elie Wiesel tells his story of being a teenage boy in the death camps of Nazi Germany during World War II.
He uses the necessary words, and he speaks from the depths of his being.
He lost his mother, his father, and his young sister in the camps.
He was liberated from Buchenwald by American soldiers on April 11, 1945.
Wiesel recalls that after he was freed, he saw his reflection in a mirror for the first time since he was transported:
“From the depths of the mirror, a corpse gazed back at me.”
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2024 All rights reserved.
Home Team: Poems About Baseball (book review)
Edwin Romond hits another homer…
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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”
* * * * * *
by Richard Subber | Nov 9, 2024 | Poetry, Reflections, Reviews of other poets
c’mon in…
“This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.”
Jalāl al-Dīn Muḥammad Rūmī “Rumi” (1207-1273)
a 13th-century Persian poet
Coleman Barks, trans.
the guest house can be your house,
the “new arrival” can be you…
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Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2024 All rights reserved.
Book review: “The Gentle Boy”
The Puritans had a dark side…
by Nathaniel Hawthorne
–
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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