by Richard Subber | Jul 20, 2025 | Language, Poetry, Reviews of other poets
the wisdom of Rainer Maria Rilke
“Pour yourself out like a fountain…”
Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926)
Bohemian-Austrian poet
Rilke wrote with nuance. Spend some time with his poetry. A second or third experience with his lines often exposes the reader to poignantly different understandings, new intuitions, lusciously incremental meanings…
Apparently he did not intend “Pour yourself out like a fountain” to be explicit advice for poets, but I think the phrase does good duty for that purpose. Especially I like the exhortation to “pour.” I’m happy when my poems are a gushing reflection of what I feel and see.
Rilke offered more. His full statement was:
“Pour yourself out like a fountain.
Flow into the knowledge that what you are seeking
finishes often at the start, and, with ending, begins.”
That’s good for a second read. Think fountain-ish.
Source:
Rainer Maria Rilke, Part Two, XII, of The Sonnets to Orpheus, 1922
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My poetry. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2025 All rights reserved.
Book review: The Poems of Robert Frost
he hears bluebirds talking…
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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 | Jul 17, 2025 | American history, Book reviews, Books, Democracy, History, Language, Politics, Power and inequality, Reflections
“…to make lies sound truthful…”
Book review:
What Orwell Didn’t Know:
Propaganda and the New Face of American Politics
Andras Szanto, ed.
New York: Public Affairs, 2007.
236 pages.
This collection by Andras Szanto was published before the Obama presidency and what followed.
Essays by Martin Kaplan, Victor Navasky, and Geoffrey Cowan, in particular, illuminate these insightful, topical revelations about media failure to communicate truths.
George Orwell’s well-known essay, “Politics and the English Language,” is still useful and challenging, almost 75 years after he wrote it.
An excerpt from What Orwell Didn’t Know:
“…the present political chaos is connected with the decay of language…Political language…is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind…”
It is a terrifying reality that this statement sounds like it was written yesterday.
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2025 All rights reserved.
Book review: The Bartender’s Tale
Ivan Doig’s story, I mostly loved it…
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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 | Jul 15, 2025 | Human Nature, Reflections
many ways to cherish butterflies…
“…but on paper, things can live forever.
On paper, a butterfly never dies.”
Jacqueline Woodson (b1963)
Writes books for youth
…kids draw pictures
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Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2025 All rights reserved.
Book review: Shawshank Redemption
A world I do not want to know…
by Stephen King
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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 12, 2025 | Language, My poetry, Poetry, Reflections
another next year…
Time traveler
Tomorrow didn’t used to be a goal.
Next week wasn’t the future
for a long time.
A year from now
didn’t always seem so far away.
For years I was
only barely interested
in my birthday,
now I see that it means
another next year
is nothing but past.
Future entices, future mystifies,
future engages
but it is not potent.
Today is the thing,
now rings the bell,
later is lonely,
it waits for a friend.
I don’t check my watch,
the chime is enough
to remind me
that minutes can be magic,
I welcome another minute,
I live my time.
April 5, 2025
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My poetry. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2025 All rights reserved.
Book review: The Snow Goose
…sensual drama, eminently poetic…
by Paul Gallico
–
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”
Your comments are welcome—tell me what you’re thinking.
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by Richard Subber | Jul 10, 2025 | American history, Book reviews, Books, History, Human Nature, Power and inequality
The Indians had a point of view…
Book review:
Red Brethren:
The Brothertown and Stockbridge Indians
and the Problem of Race in Early America
by David J. Silverman
Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2010
279 pages
Red Brethren is a scholarly deep dive into the experiences and mindsets of the First Americans who first tried to tolerate and later resisted the imperious impositions of the European colonists in North America.
The Indians left almost no record in their own writing, but Silverman exercises the customary technique of extrapolating Indian thoughts and attitudes from the written European record.
In the context of the widespread (not universal, still controversial) understanding that “race” is a social construct and a destructive concept, it is a bit puzzling that Silverman uses various manifestations of “race” in his analysis.
Nevertheless, he makes it plain that we have so much to learn about what the indigenous peoples thought of the European invaders, and how the thinking of our Red Brethren changed over time.
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2025 All rights reserved.
Movie review: Same Time, Next Year
all-American adultery, oh yeah…
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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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