by Richard Subber | Aug 19, 2025 | Book reviews, Books, History, Human Nature, World history
the not so “Dark Ages”
Book review:
The Bright Ages:
A New History of Medieval Europe
by Matthew Gabriele and David M. Perry
New York: HarperCollins, 2021
Gabriele and Perry offer quite a few things you never knew about the so-called “Dark Ages.”
The Bright Ages lays out an alternative view: life went on after the “sack” of Rome in 410 CE.
Various regional rulers and peoples continued to call themselves Romans for hundreds of years.
There was some beauty in the “Dark Ages.”
Human frailties were in full force before, during, and after the “Dark Ages.”
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Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2025 All rights reserved.
Book review: The Financier
Theodore Dreiser’s villain…
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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”
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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
–
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 14, 2025 | Book reviews, Books
mere talk of love
Book review:
Washington Square
by Henry James (1843-1916)
New York: Doric Books, 1950
214 pages
Washington Square was written in 1880, depicting high society life in New York City in the 1840s and 1850s
Washington Square is a shallow dive into the meaning and the eternities of love.
Henry James offers 214 pages of sometimes desultory talk about love, and a couple kisses, and a touch—not an embrace—or two, and Catherine and Morris talk at each other about their concepts of love, but there are no awakenings, and no whispers melting on lips, and no warm zephyrs that fill the emptied spaces.
After Catherine and Morris have grudged their final words, Morris stomps away with his hat jammed on, Catherine returns to her knitting, and the reader is abandoned, adrift, still waiting to be filled by demonstrations of dearest love.
Henry James is a wordsmith, no dispute about that. The reader learns endearing and vastly frightening elements of the characters of the alleged lovers, and her curiously and completely unlikeable father, and Mrs. Penniman, the aunt who won’t butt out.
Henry James chases a plot, but doesn’t get his net around one.
The story line, for my taste, never ceases to be a prelude. There is no rip and no snorting in the pretend climax, and no satisfaction in the ersatz denouement.
If you want to argue that this presumed love story never gets started, and doesn’t really end, you get no argument from me.
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Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2025 All rights reserved.
The Visible Hand:
The Managerial Revolution in American Business (book review)
no managers in olden times…
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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”
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by Richard Subber | Aug 12, 2025 | Reflections, Tidbits
this is so simple…
“Time is more complex near the sea
than in any other place…”
Just think for a sec—how many watches do you need?
From Tortilla Flat in The Short Novels of John Steinbeck, by John Steinbeck with an introduction by Joseph Henry Jackson, New York: The Viking Press, orig. copy. 1953, 1963.
527 pages
p. 109
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Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2025 All rights reserved.
The Reader (Der Vorleser)
Not just a rehash of WWII…
by Bernhard Schlink
–
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 | Aug 9, 2025 | My poetry, Poetry, Reflections
sand is humble…
my sand
When did I first know
that inside of me
some part is ocean?
I feel the gift
of a swelling crest,
I carry little waves
to make a shore
wherever I may need
to stop and rest,
I see afar with eyes of birds,
I skim a surf
where no one goes,
I walk with you
and wonder
that we may have different sand
between our toes,
the breaker sound
is a familiar call,
you may hear me hum
but can you hear
my offshore breeze,
the plover’s song that
lingers at my ear?
The ocean part of me is older, noisier,
easier, light like driftwood,
calm as sunsets,
sure as tides,
bright as sunrise,
as humble as sand,
eternal like blue water.
April 26, 2025
Inspired by a haiku by Rosemary Wahtola Trommer, April 20, 2025.
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My poetry. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2025 All rights reserved.
Book review: Shantung Compound
They didn’t care much
about each other…
by Langdon Gilkey
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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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