by Richard Subber | Apr 2, 2026 | My poetry, Poetry
The Book of Days
The dawn’s early light can be pleasure enough for the whole day.
There are words enough to tell the story of “the temptation of day to come.”
It is my delight to write some of them for your delectation.
to come
The star of day
troubles low clouds
in the earliest dawning,
there is none of day,
the horizon a muddle,
the faint light
pushes the high dark,
a promise strains in the vault.
November 16, 2025
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My poetry. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2026 All rights reserved.
Book review: The Sea Runners
…it informs, it does not soar…
by Ivan Doig
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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”
Your comments are welcome—tell me what you’re thinking.
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by Richard Subber | Mar 31, 2026 | American history, Books, History, Human Nature, Politics, Power and inequality, World history
guns and germs…
Book review:
1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus
by Charles Mann
New York: Vintage Books, 2011
553 pages
Everything you never knew about civilized people in the Americas before the Europeans arrived and killed most of them (OK, many died in battle, but it was European diseases, mostly). Maybe close to 100 million “native” people died within 100 years or so of the “discovery” by Columbus…but hold on, this book is not about Wounded Knee-type criticism or ex post facto self-flagellation.
In 1491, Mann beautifully describes the marvelous sophistication of cultures, cities, agriculture, arts and science that blossomed in North America, Central America, and South America thousands of years ago, in many cases predating achievements and growth and civilization in Europe. Yes, the Incas never used the wheel except for children’s toys. And yes, the Mississippian city of Cahokia was a bustling port and a trading center with population equal to Paris in France—and that was 500 years before Columbus sailed.
And yes, there were grand cities (e.g., Cahokia) in the Americas before there was pyramid-building in Egypt. And yes, the Olmec culture in what is now Mexico invented the zero whole centuries before mathematicians in India did the same.
My recollection of schoolboy learning about the history of the Americas is that the dates and events were tied to discovery and conquest and colonization by Europeans. The implication was that, before the white men with guns, germs, and steel arrived, nothing much was going on in whole continents characterized more by “virgin land” and “endless wilderness” than by people who had agriculture, city life, art, trade, commerce, religion, science, kings, and philosophers.
Mann offers 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus. For me, the joy of reading this book is learning about the multiplicity of cultures that flourished in the Americas, and learning how they tamed and managed and very greenly conserved their environment…and for me, the sad revelation of this book is understanding that the peoples of the Americas were human beings whose achievements were noble and notable, and yet, lamentably, their cultural legacies are largely lost and the losses are barely mourned.
In 1533 Pizarro and his conquistadors at Cuzco precipitated the decline of the 300-year-old Inca empire in Peru. Fifty years later, the Spanish colonial administrators in Peru ordered the burning of all the Incan “khipu” knotted string records because they were “idolatrous objects.” Khipu were the Incas’ only form of writing. The smoke from the burning of their books gets in your eyes, forever and ever.
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2026 All rights reserved.
Book review: Shantung Compound
They didn’t care much
about each other…
by Langdon Gilkey
–
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 | Mar 29, 2026 | My poetry, Poetry
touching, of course…
Caress
Seeing you each day
is part of the fullness
of my life,
you live in my world,
I feel your touch,
I hear your laugh,
your murmurs are music,
the bright of your eye lives on,
the squeeze of your fingers
surrounds my hand.
All of me loves all of you.
January 4, 2026
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My poetry. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2026 All rights reserved.
The “dime novels” in the Civil War
Think “blood-and-thunder”…
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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 | Mar 26, 2026 | Poetry, Reviews of other poets
No ring to grab here…
Book review:
Almost Complete Poems
by Stanley Moss (1925-2024)
New York: Seven Stories Press, 2016
Almost Complete Poems represents much of the life work of poet Stanley Moss.
The poems appear to be sincere babble. Moss is literate but undisciplined. The poems lack coherence.
It’s not my life’s work to read them.
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2026 All rights reserved.
Book review: “Bartleby, the Scrivener”
Loneliness beyond understanding…
by Herman Melville
–
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 | Mar 24, 2026 | My poetry, Poetry, Politics
our old friend Martin
Questions
Did you see the man we can call
“our old friend Martin”?
It seems the good they die young,
but we can remember
the goodness that he preached,
and the goodness that he lived,
and we can murmur his name
as we do a good thing today,
and do the same tomorrow.
The man called Martin
pointed the way
and he asked many questions.
He recalled the Good Samaritan who asked:
“If I do not stop to help this man,
what will happen to him?”
The man called Martin said:
“The question is, ‘If I do not stop
to help the sanitation workers,
what will happen to them?’
That’s the question.”
Martin said “I have been to the mountaintop.”
The mountaintop is far,
maybe a lifetime journey away,
and few of us may make it
to the mountaintop,
but we can murmur Martin’s name
as we do a good thing today
and do the same tomorrow.
Will you do a good thing today?
That’s the question.
January 2, 2026
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My poetry. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2026 All rights reserved.
Book review: The Comanche Empire
the other story of the American West…
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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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