by Richard Subber | Aug 22, 2024 | Human Nature, My poetry, Poetry, Reflections
I realize new truths…
now then…
The unknowable future
has been around for a long time,
it is,
it will be,
the mystery is what, not if.
I realize new truths.
I’m closer to my future
than I used to be,
I’m closer to my final future.
I think more about tomorrow,
I think more about today.
Sweet futures can become sweet nows,
the nows I can know.
I can choose my next now,
I do not know tomorrow’s future,
I will live it in good time.
May 11, 2024
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My poetry. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2024 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 | Aug 20, 2024 | Book reviews, Books, Books Commentary, Joys of reading
It all got started in 1665…
A book review is something of value.
At least, it tells you something about a book you haven’t read.
Let’s be candid: if you don’t know anything about the book reviewer, the value—not necessarily the quality—of the review is diminished. (I’d love to have an encyclopedia of the multiple reviews of reviewers who do it for a living.)
Book reviews aren’t as old as the hills.
In 1665 the Journal des Sçavans in Paris was a precursor of published book reviews, with non-opinionated summaries focused principally on publications dealing with biology and technology.
What we think of as book reviews can be dated to the 18th century, when magazines (also a new publishing concept at that time) began offering essays about books. An increasing number of books were being published in that era, and this created an audience for the reviews.
The words “book review” made it into print as early as 1861. Harvard professor Jill Lepore notes that “In the 19th century, an age of factories and suffrage, literacy rates increased, the price of books fell, and magazines were cheaper still. A democracy of readers rose up against an aristocracy of critics.” Book reviewing found its niche.
Fun fact: Edgar Allan Poe was a notoriously caustic reviewer in the middle of the 19th century.
In 1900 an anonymous “Veteran Book Reviewer” wrote a piece for The Independent that was titled “Up-to-Date Book Reviewing.” Book reviewing had become a craft.
Today, with universal access to the internet, anybody can be a book reviewer. Fer gosh sakes, some folks think that worthwhile book reviewing is in decline because there are too many books to review.
I’d like to say there oughta be a law.
Ain’t gonna stop me from reading.
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2024 All rights reserved.
Book review: Tales from Shakespeare
summaries by Charles and Mary Lamb…
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 | Aug 18, 2024 | Human Nature, Reflections, Tidbits
don’t pretend this isn’t true…
“We almost always know what the right thing is.”
from The Daily Stoic by Ryan Holiday and Stephen Hanselman
New York: Portfolio/Penguin, 2016
p. 156
don’t try to forget this
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Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2024 All rights reserved.
Book review: Saint Joan
by George Bernard Shaw
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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 15, 2024 | Human Nature, My poetry, Poetry, Reflections
what’s it all about?
another thing
j’ever notice
that they never look up
to look at the phone?
head tilted down,
the obvious sign,
body still,
thumbs awhirl,
faintest breaths…
how often have you seen
someone pumping a fist
and shouting “yeah!”
after scrolling down
one more time?
Try talking to that guy
in the waiting room
who hasn’t looked up
from his phone
since he sat down…
think about being him…
it won’t take long.
May 9, 2024
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My poetry. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2024 All rights reserved.
1491 by Charles Mann (book review)
…lost American legacies
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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 13, 2024 | Theater and play reviews
wholesome, believable, nice…
Movie review:
Starman
1984
Rated PG
115 minutes
Break the egg labeled Close Encounters of the Third Kind and break the egg labeled Jane Eyre, and scramble them with some special sauce, and you get Starman.
You mix your basic alien lands on Earth story line with love at a slow burn, and then give Jeff Bridges (the “Starman”) a chance to theatrically show how hard it is to learn the English language after you crawl out of the spaceship.
Several characters rise to the challenge of answering the obvious question: how do we deal with a being from another planet who visits Earth with no obvious threatening intent?
The good guys win in this story, and Jenny (Karen Allen) learns a lot more than anyone else about a different kind of life out there in space.
The story is wholesome, there’s some action, Bridges and Allen make a believably nice couple, and you don’t have to wonder too much about how the story is going to end.
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Movie review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2024 All rights reserved.
iambic pentameter, y’know?
da DUH, da DUH, and stuff…
“In search of”…my poem
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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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