Small Things Like These…book review

intensely human emotions…

 

 

Book review:

Small Things Like These

 

by Claire Keegan (b1968)

New York: Grove Press, 2021

118 pages 

 

Much of Small Things Like These qualifies for an “ordinary” description, but the reader repeatedly is invited to experience such intensely human emotions that it’s troubling to turn the page and continue reading…

Bill Furlong, a coal dealer living a small life in a small town, rescues a forsaken girl, and understands that there is “fresh, new, unrecognizable joy in his heart,” but he dreads what is “yet to come…” The girl is a hapless pawn in an enduring evil reality.

Keegan knows how to tell the reader about that joy, in her smooth and enticing prose that creates credible people living credible lives in a small place that makes room for great hearts.

She gives us reason to imagine that more people are willing to do good.

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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2025 All rights reserved.

 

Book review: Who Built America?

…including people

            who got their hands dirty

by Christopher Clark and Nancy Hewitt

click here

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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“time would ease me…”…Sarah Orne Jewett

“time would ease me…”…Sarah Orne Jewett

just the same…

 

 

“I do miss her,” he answered, and sighed again.

Folks all kep’ repeatin’ that time would ease me,

    but I can’t find it does.

 No, I miss her just the same every day.”

 

Fisherman Elijah Tilley talks about his deceased wife, he calls her “poor dear,”

 

in Sarah Orne Jewett: Novels and Stories

by Sarah Orne Jewett (1849-1909)

The Library of America

New York: Literary Classics of the United States, Inc., 1994

p. 477

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Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2025 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”

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“the grass, in its millions…”…my poem

“the grass, in its millions…”…my poem

hark to the wind…

 

 

grass, singing

 

When you walk the fields,

you scuff the sopranos,

you tramp on the tenors,

you crush the chorus,

the grass, in its millions,

is singing its tiniest of songs.

 

If you stop to think on

   what the field may know,

if you hark to the wind

   but listen beneath it,

if you wait for

   the coda

      of the melody of the turf,

you may hear

   scant words

      and the lightest notes

         and the endless tunes

            of the sward.

 

March 4, 2025

Inspired by “Between Winter and Spring” by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer:

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My poetry. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2025 All rights reserved.

 

A quote from General Custer

Hint: something to do with Indians…

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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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The Book of Days…part lii

The Book of Days…part lii

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.

 

 

skyful

 

The scant clouds

   in disarray

      are soft,

they smooth the sky

   above the syrup river

      that marks the horizon,

they disdain our world,

they hie away,

they flee the day.

 

March 6, 2025

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My poetry. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2025 All rights reserved.

 

Book review:

Great Tales of Terror

         and the Supernatural

something horrifying for everyone…

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.

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Lincoln, he was a politician…movie review

Lincoln, he was a politician…movie review

the spadework for the 13th Amendment…

 

 

Movie review:

Lincoln

 

2012, PG-13, 150 minutes

The movie Lincoln is about Lincoln, and we don’t need to spell out his name. Daniel Day-Lewis gives a performance as the Great Emancipator that rings true on both the good side and the not so good side. Sally Field rather woodenly plays the role of Mrs. Lincoln, or, as she preferred, “Mrs. President.”

Lincoln was a politician—we tend to forget that. The subplot of the movie is the horse trading and the not-so-savory vote buying that went on in the runup to the successful vote on the 13th Amendment to abolish slavery. Lincoln’s right-hand men did what he asked them to do and what they knew he wanted them to do—and Lincoln finally did a bit of the spadework himself.

Lincoln is not a spectacular movie. It’s dark in many ways. It is profoundly historical, and the drama keeps peeking through the windows.

One bag of potato chips is enough.

By the way, Lincoln was born in 1809, when it wasn’t widely popular to give babies a middle name.

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Movie review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2025 All rights reserved.

 

Book review:

John Eliot: “Apostle to the Indians”

…a righteous man of his times

by Ola Elizabeth Winslow

click here

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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