by Richard Subber | Aug 31, 2025 | Book reviews, Books, Human Nature, Joys of reading, Language
prime times of life…
Book review:
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
by Muriel Spark (1918-2006)
New York: Harper Perennial, 1961, 1994
187 pages
Miss Jean Brodie, an exceedingly unconventional teacher, described every part of her life and her commitments and her outlook as being “in my prime,” but it is a hallmark of Muriel Spark’s magnificent talent in assembling the best words that it is left to the reader to completely imagine what “prime” may mean.
The defining value of the novel is the unceasing willingness and undaunted desire of Brodie’s carefully chosen students—the girls in the “Brodie set”—to try to figure out what “prime” means and to try to understand the effects their teacher is having on them.
The pages are filled with interactions and misunderstandings and hormonal energies. Miss Brodie and the other grownups dramatically pursue their teaching roles, but the girls largely find their own ways to learn things and work at growing up while doing so.
The book ends but the story doesn’t end. Henry Adams said a teacher can never tell “where (her) influence stops.” The ultimately humiliated Miss Brodie dies, but her prime has no boundaries and her students make their own lives.
p.s. the acclaimed movie with the same name and Maggie Smith as Miss Brodie is first class entertainment, but it mostly ignores Muriel Spark’s grimly realistic portrayal of the life forces that animate the “Brodie set.”
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My poetry. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2025 All rights reserved.
Book review: The Proud Tower
…a lot more than a history book…
by Barbara Tuchman
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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 | Aug 26, 2025 | My poetry, Poetry, Reflections, Tidbits
you know what to do…
point and squeeze
Shoot me if I start watching TV again.
I don’t want to be
like the old lady in the wheelchair
who turns, with some visible pain,
to gaze at the TV screen as she’s pushed past it.
I don’t want to be
like the old guy in the fitness room
who sits on his exercise chair
and looks up, fixated with mouth agape,
at the TV screen that won’t stop talking.
I don’t want to be
like the people in the waiting room
who can’t stop looking
at the TV screen
with the sound turned down.
Keep an eye on me—you know what to do.
May 14, 2025
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My poetry. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2025 All rights reserved.
The Scarlet Letter, victim of Hollywood
Nathaniel Hawthorne’s version is best
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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 | Aug 23, 2025 | Theater and play reviews
a different kind of Tom Hanks film…
Movie review:
News of the World
2020
PG-13
118 minutes
It’s titled News of the World, but that’s really not what this see-it-again movie is all about.
This out-of-the-ordinary Tom Hanks film is about awakening, and affection cradled in a dirty crystal goblet, and a little girl with a deadpan face and a deadened life who learns to smile.
The story line: a grizzled Civil War veteran, Captain Jefferson Kyle Kidd (Tom Hanks), takes time out from his traveling newspaper reading gig to escort a hapless 12-year-old German girl, Johanna (Helena Zengel), to her mostly uninterested distant relatives after she escapes from Kiowa captivity.
There’s no love affair, of course, but the old man/young girl affection starts to pile on, and they handle some adversity, and Johanna teaches Kidd some Kiowa words so they can talk, and Texas cowboy culture passes them by as they roll their raggedy wagon into the future.
Johanna learns a beaming smile as she learns to work with Kidd in his reading rambles, and they make a life. It’s a feel good ending.
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Movie review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2025 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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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 | Aug 21, 2025 | My poetry, Poetry
words as ring with fire…
such as…
I write such words as may inspire,
and to what end?—you may inquire…
I choose such words as ring with fire,
you hear them as you will.
My words conspire to sound such joy,
such pleasure as may climb a hill
and sing such songs as linger still
on lips that kiss the tune.
I write such words that whisper true
and tell such tales of rhyme and flame,
that lovers will caress such words
and angels learn their name.
May 18, 2025
Rhyming inspired by “Lepanto” by Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936)
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My poetry. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2025 All rights reserved.
Book review: Lafayette by Harlow Unger
He was a great man. Also rich and lucky.
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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 | Aug 17, 2025 | My poetry, Poetry
wonderment…
adoro
Angels we can never see,
my dearest one may be an angel…
does she weep when I fail my better nature?
does she sing in silence when I do a good thing?
does she touch me when I wonder?
does she hold me to her
when I need
to feel a warmth in my world?
December 8, 2024
inspired by “For the Heartbroken” by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, December 8, 2024, on her website
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My poetry. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2025 All rights reserved.
Book review: The Sea Runners
…it informs, it does not soar…
by Ivan Doig
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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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