by Richard Subber | Nov 12, 2023 | American history, Book reviews, Books, History
…where the buffalo stopped roaming…
Book review:
Crazy Horse
by Larry McMurtry (1936-2021)
Bibliophile, novelist, Pulitzer Prize winner
New York: Penguin Group, 1999 (Penguin Lives series)
148 pages
Apparently it is Larry McMurtry’s goal in life to avoid writing everything I don’t like.
Crazy Horse is a gem: crisp, appealing, well-informed, in McMurtry’s signature style—crafted words, no nonsense, literate. This is a candid assessment of the life and times of Ta-Shunka-Witco (“His horse is crazy”) (c1840-1877).
If there had been no relentless assault against the American Indians by white America and its government, Crazy Horse might have been an anonymous, eccentric figure among the Oglala Sioux. His compatriots probably understood him about as well as we do—that is, not much.
From several points of view, in the middle of the 19th century and now, Crazy Horse was a loner and a lone eagle. McMurtry does a commendable job of trying to see the world as Crazy Horse saw it. The world as Crazy Horse wanted it to be was shriveling around him during his entire life.
It’s too bad that Crazy Horse wasn’t born in an earlier, less contentious, more agreeable time. It’s too bad that he couldn’t simply have made his home where the buffalo roamed.
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2023 All rights reserved.
Book review: The Lost History of Stars
Dave Boling’s delicate story
about a brutal war
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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”
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by Richard Subber | Nov 7, 2023 | Human Nature, My poetry, Poetry
the yearling ahead of the herd
Taking a walk
There she goes again.
She’s running ahead, beyond my reach,
she stops and waits if I call loud enough,
but she doesn’t shout back.
Taking a walk
isn’t something she needs to do
in measured steps with me.
It’s the daring.
I think she’s not testing limits,
she’s learning what to do,
and how to do it,
before a limit comes into view,
before it makes her mindful.
It’s the dashing.
It’s not escape, it’s exuberance.
It’s a style of open plains loping,
she doesn’t see the sidewalk
that I’m following,
she’s following the instinct
of the yearling ahead of the herd.
It’s the dancing.
She runs, she skips,
she jumps, she hears a music
that has nothing to do
with my cautions
or my grown-up obligation
or my protective love.
It’s the doing.
I understand that she is
reaping new experiences in her life.
There is no danger outside my imagination.
The coyotes are out of range,
I’m sure of it and she depends on me.
She is a dasher, a dancer and a prancer,
and it is my joy
to scramble to catch up to her again.
April 22, 2017
My oldest granddaughter likes being out in front. She has never actually ranged far enough ahead to be out of my sight. I don’t know if she would go that far. I guess she wouldn’t do it deliberately. I don’t really think she might be attacked by a dog rushing out from the next home she passes…I can’t get that completely out of my mind. I can guess at the horizons she’s pushing back in her mind. She won’t understand the joy/fear in my mind until she’s a lot older. There are three more grandkids in line behind her. I’m learning to walk faster.
My poem “Taking a walk” was published in my second collection of 47 poems, Seeing far: Selected poems.
You can buy it on Amazon (paperback and Kindle),
or get it free in Kindle Unlimited, search for “Richard Carl Subber”
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My poetry. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2023 All rights reserved.
Movie review: Same Time, Next Year
all-American adultery, oh yeah…
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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 | Nov 4, 2023 | Theater and play reviews
from the heart, a patriot
Movie review:
Darkest Hour
Gary Oldman was 59 years old when he won an Oscar (Best Actor) for giving us a completely believable Winston Churchill who decided in June 1940 to fight Hitler instead of settling for a completely risky peace agreement.
Darkest Hour (2019, rated PG-13, 125 minutes) is a gem. Oldman is Churchill: overweight, jowly, devotee of long cigars and whiskey, imperious, meekly in love with Clementine (he called her “Clemmie,” she called him “Pig”), a flamboyant patriot, and wartime leader.
Churchill was a career politician, of course, and Oldman deftly portrays his Machiavellian strengths and weaknesses.
Churchill was an aristocratic patriot in the core of his being.
Less than a month after he became prime minister, Churchill energized Parliament:
“We shall defend our island…we shall fight on the beaches…on the landing grounds…in the fields…in the streets…in the hills…we shall never surrender.”
Darkest Hour is Churchill’s (Oldman’s) bright triumph.
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Movie review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2023 All rights reserved.
The Witches: Salem, 1692 (book review)
…a community gone crazy…
by Stacy Schiff
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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”
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by Richard Subber | Oct 31, 2023 | Book reviews, Books, Joys of reading, Language
sassy, salty, and singular
Book review:
The Kingdom of the Kid:
Growing Up In The Long-Lost Hamptons
by Geoff Gehman (b1958)
State University of New York Press, Albany, NY 2013
238 pages
I stepped outside my comfort zone to read Geoff Gehman’s memoir about some of his childhood years in the “long-lost Hamptons.” I’m glad I did.
If you have a particular point of view about memoirs, either for or against, try to forget it and pick up The Kingdom of the Kid, and just settle in for the ride.
This is more than a prosaic romp through childhood memories, it is a paean celebrating a child’s-eye-view of life.
Gehman is a writer who likes to “linger over words,” that’s my kind of writer. His prose, his stories, his memories…sassy, salty and singular.
Gehman is a poet, too. Repeatedly, he offers lush insight into his industrious youth, his friendships with the young and the old, his affinity for the place, the “long-lost Hamptons” where Geoff and his pals spent the good old days.
He describes the scene as he observed mourners in the Wainscott Cemetery:
“…I sat on my bike in the school parking lot, shaded by grand sycamores, and watched visitors treat the cemetery with reverence. They placed flowers by graves, prayed on their knees, cried on their backs. They stared at the sky, held séances in broad daylight, eavesdropped on eternity.
“Those pilgrims taught me the morality of mortality. Without asking anyone I learned to walk around the stones, to respect the dead as if they were alive.”
In every chapter he offers another little piece of his heart.
The Kingdom of the Kid is good reading. Real good.
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2023 All rights reserved.
Book review: The Bridges of Madison County
If you’re looking for
highly stoked eroticism
and high-rolling lives
that throw off sparks when they touch,
look elsewhere.
by Robert Waller
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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”
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by Richard Subber | Oct 29, 2023 | Human Nature, Joys of reading, My poetry, Poetry
remember your first time?
Learning
There is duty in learning, yes,
but the gentle passions of curiosity
can turn the page
and move the pencil
and light the quest
to learn more.
There is labor in learning, yes,
but the rush of exaltation
excites the calculus of understanding,
spills pride across the page,
pushes the pencil to the next line,
wakens the will to persist,
tightens the fingers
that write the strange new truths,
leans into learning
a bit more,
and then more…
July 11, 2023
Inspired by Die Hausaufgabe (The Homework), an 1893 painting by Simon Glücklich (1863-1943)
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My poetry. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2023 All rights reserved.
Book review: The Proud Tower
…it’s a lot more than a history book…
by Barbara Tuchman
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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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