The Woman at the Washington Zoo…book review

The Woman at the Washington Zoo…book review

a sustaining emotional roadmap…

 

 

Book review:

The Woman at the Washington Zoo:

   Writings on Politics, Family, and Fate

 

by Marjorie Williams (1958-2005)

Timothy Noah, ed.

New York: PublicAffairs, Perseus Books Group, 2005

358 pages

 

I wish I had known about Marjorie Williams’ work when she was an active staff writer at The Washington Post.

She had a pungent, penetrating style, and she carefully offered reasoned judgment as well as what we can nostalgically think of today as “facts.”

In The Woman at the Washington Zoo, her personal memoirs about her life and her cancer are wholly human, and they remain as a sustaining emotional roadmap for an engaged reader.

*   *   *   *   *   *

Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2024 All rights reserved.

 

“…and dipped in folly…”

only Poe knows how to say it…

click here

 

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”

*   *   *   *   *   *

right or wrong? look deeper…

right or wrong? look deeper…

think of all the angles…

 

 

“When you are confronted

with a seemingly painless moral choice,

   the odds are that

        you haven’t looked deeply enough.”

 

p. 154

 

from What It Is Like to Go to War

by Karl Marlantes

New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2011

256 pages

 

Another reason to think twice.

*   *   *   *   *   *

Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2024 All rights reserved.

 

Book review: The Blithedale Romance

by Nathaniel Hawthorne, not his best…

click here

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”

*   *   *   *   *   *

Norma Rae…movie review

Norma Rae…movie review

you have to sweat this one…

 

 

Movie review:

Norma Rae

 

1979

Rated PG

114 minutes

 

Not too many movies make you really feel like you’re sweating. Or really crying.

Norma Rae is one of the good ones. It’s hot and dirty work putting a union into a textile mill in North Carolina in the 1970s.

Sally Field was 33 years old when she played the “Go union!” gal in Norma Rae, and she puts all her photogenic energy into the role. She won the Oscar for Best Actress.

Ron Leibman is Reuben Warshowsky, the New York union guy who leads the way to sweating out the vote right down to the inevitable victory, and falls for Norma in a completely gentlemanly way.

Sad to say, Norma and Reuben lose the big prize: in their last minutes together, in a remarkably well-scripted exchange of halting words and gushing emotion, neither of these big talkers has the courage to say what is so obviously in their hearts.

*   *   *   *   *   *

Movie review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2024 All rights reserved.

 

Remember the Tallahatchie Bridge?

Molly Johnson sings it right…

click here

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”

*   *   *   *   *   *

Don’t make resolutions…do something good

Don’t make resolutions…do something good

 

I avoided reading any of the “Best of 2023…” stuff

because I figure I can do a lot better by hitching my wagon to one of my stars

     and stepping right through the door into 2024.

 

OK, you can tell that I don’t mind mixing metaphors.

 

Just let me say this:

There are a lot of reasons to do things right—or more right—in 2024.

I’m committed to do what I can, according to my lights.

I’m going to try to grab all of my chances to do something good.

That’s my way of saying Happy New Year.

*   *   *   *   *   *

Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2023 All rights reserved.

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”

 

“the last time…”…is it a thing?—my poem

“the last time…”…is it a thing?—my poem

remember the urgent joy…

 

 

no mo’

 

…of course there’s no harm

   to thrill in the doing of the thing,

“the last time” are tempting words

   that rush too quickly to my lips,

 

I hear their echo

   as I rush to the finish,

and only then

   do I wonder

      why I don’t remember

         the urgent joy

            of the first time,

and the rich learning

   of all the other times,

 

and now I see

   that the last time

      is, of course, a rare moment,

but I want so little of it…

 

September 19, 2023

 

Cutting the grass used to be a thing.

I don’t miss it.

*   *   *   *   *   *

My poetry. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2023 All rights reserved.

 

Book review: “Bartleby, the Scrivener”

Loneliness beyond understanding…

by Herman Melville

click here

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.

*   *   *   *   *   *

Pin It on Pinterest