by Richard Subber | Feb 22, 2024 | Book reviews, Books, Human Nature
to each his or her own…
Book review:
On Chesil Beach
by Ian McEwan (b1948)
New York: Nan A. Talese, Doubleday, 2007
203 pages
Most likely you will find yourself undeniably drawn to keep turning the pages of On Chesil Beach.
It’s a quiet book, but it’s loaded with exotically passionate words and moments and discoveries about the very private concepts of love that Edward and Florence bring to their marriage in 1962.
There is almost none of the heaving bosom stuff that corrupts so many tales about love, and the language is realistic, almost chaste.
Ian McEwan lets the two lovers try to talk to each other about stuff that they deeply feel but for which they hardly know the words.
There is a sad, and sadly understandable, ending.
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2024 All rights reserved.
Book review: The Financier
Theodore Dreiser’s villain…
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 | Feb 20, 2024 | My poetry, Poetry
a rush of words
Words
He’s talking now,
he’s telling tales,
and he repeats
as he regales
dear Gram and me
with words so strong,
and thoughts so deep,
and bits of song.
He’s hatching words
to speak his mind.
He’s gushing words,
each one’s a trace
of what he’s learned
or redefined
or made to fit
the time and place.
This rush of words,
this glib embrace,
this triumph of
our youngest lad
is quite a thrill,
a gift each day.
His words are real
but lips and tongue
are still at play—
we don’t know what
he means to say.
We’ll love it more
when it’s all straight,
we understand,
his meaning’s clear.
For now we wait,
we make our sounds,
he doesn’t stop
or hesitate.
He’s in full voice,
it fills the ear,
the sounds of love
are what we hear.
September 2, 2015
Every kid gets to this place, don’t you love it?
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My poetry. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2024 All rights reserved.
Book review: The Scarlet Letter
the beating hearts…by Nathaniel Hawthorne
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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”
Your comments are welcome—tell me what you’re thinking.
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by Richard Subber | Feb 18, 2024 | Book reviews, Books, Human Nature
a real good story…
Book review:
The Fountainhead
by Ayn Rand (1905-1982)
Indianapolis, IN: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1943
754 pages
You already know something about what The Fountainhead is all about, otherwise you wouldn’t be reading this review.
Here’s my contribution: think of The Fountainhead as a novel, as a love story, as a heroic fable, as a celebration of human virtue and the urge to do the right thing. Think about that moralistic gem from Hamlet: “To thine own self be true.”
The Fountainhead is an elaboration of Ayn Rand’s imagination about ambition, self-actualization, courage, endurance, and a kind of love that needs more marshmallows and less of the kind of talk that you wouldn’t expect to hear in the library stacks.
It’s a real good story. Roark, Dominique, and a couple other characters aren’t sketched, they’re lushly painted with many words that you don’t hear in ordinary conversation.
Forget about the political claptrap that’s bandied about using a rubric of “Ayn Rand’s philosophy.”
She was a novelist first, and her talent ran dry when she stepped out of the literary sphere.
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2024 All rights reserved.
The Unknown American Revolution (book review)
in the streets, says Gary Nash
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”
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by Richard Subber | Feb 13, 2024 | My poetry, Poetry
quiet is what it was…
Sea quell
The immensity
shrinks to my gaze, and is still,
and the silence grows.
Duck Harbor Beach
Wellfleet, MA
September 9, 2019
Sitting on the sand at Duck Harbor Beach,
the bay was making absolutely no noise, it was dead quiet.
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My poetry. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2024 All rights reserved.
American Character: A History of the Epic Struggle…
Colin Woodard makes it easier to understand…(book review)
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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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by Richard Subber | Feb 10, 2024 | Book reviews, Books, Human Nature
aspirations, vagrant needs…
Book review:
The Paris Wife
by Paula McLain
New York: Ballantine Books, 2011
320 pages
Paula McLain has done it artfully. The Paris Wife is a richly nuanced account of the transformation of the 1921 marriage of Hadley Richardson and Ernest Hemingway, the first for each of them.
I had not known in detail that Hemingway was as much of an inconstant lover as he actually was.
Now I know that Paula McLain tells me as much as I need to know about the life-interrupting aspirations of Hadley, and more than I care to know about the destructive potency of Hemingway’s vagrant needs.
Excerpt (Hadley is speaking):
“[Ernest] needed me to make him feel safe…yes, the same way I needed him. But he also liked that he could disappear into his work, away from me. And return when he wanted to.”
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2024 All rights reserved.
Remember the Tallahatchie Bridge?
Molly Johnson sings it right…
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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