by Richard Subber | Nov 9, 2024 | Poetry, Reflections, Reviews of other poets
c’mon in…
“This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.”
Jalāl al-Dīn Muḥammad Rūmī “Rumi” (1207-1273)
a 13th-century Persian poet
Coleman Barks, trans.
the guest house can be your house,
the “new arrival” can be you…
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Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2024 All rights reserved.
Book review: “The Gentle Boy”
The Puritans had a dark side…
by Nathaniel Hawthorne
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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, 2024 | Human Nature, My poetry, Poetry, Reflections
in stiff embrace…
duchess with a bird
The hennin is the mode,
it weighs upon her head
but she does not wonder
that it claims the eye,
it is a tower, but a trifle,
the flaring horns are innocent
of finery or fancy,
they trail alike to capes
that hide much of her gown.
She flaunts her wealth and her self,
and marvels as she stands alone
in stiff embrace of the tiny bird,
her new universe, a bird’s horizon,
without joy, nor caper,
she cannot twirl.
The bird does not incline to fly,
it has no song,
quiet instants escape their time,
the bird is mystic,
it does not flail or flee,
she moves her empty hand to no avail,
together they make a tableau.
She who has no name
does not think to share a word,
she feels no need to seek for more,
the bird is indistinct, content,
it stays.
She is a duchess with a bird,
she tilts her head,
her double-horned hat flares,
it makes a scene,
it conjures trailing musics,
and pomp of court.
July 27, 2024
Inspired by sculpture at Birch Creek 315, Linden Ponds, Hingham, MA
Revised based on feedback from Dee Bayne
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My poetry. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2024 All rights reserved.
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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 | Nov 5, 2024 | Human Nature, Theater and play reviews
children have real lives…
Movie review:
The Breakfast Club
Which one of the kids in The Breakfast Club (1985, rated R, 97 minutes) is most like you?
Claire (Molly Ringwald), John (Judd Nelson), Andrew (Emilio Estevez), Allison (Ally Sheedy), or Brian (Anthony Hall)?
These are children whose lives you wouldn’t wish on your grandchildren.
Their Saturday detention for various student wrongdoings is a hell-fired playground for growing up and facing truths and learning about the wonderful unknowns of human kindness.
In one brief day they grow and change and assert their special personalities.
They become better people.
The Breakfast Club is funny, it’s sad, and only the kids think there are mysteries.
It becomes a feel good movie.
There’s something more: I imagine that you can’t watch the movie and avoid thinking, even once, “yeah, I was a little bit like that when I was younger.”
I imagine that you’ll take a minute or two,
like I did,
to think about how you’re different now.
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Movie review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2025 All rights reserved.
Book review: Grace Notes
Is it prose or poetry?
by Brian Doyle
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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”
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by Richard Subber | Nov 2, 2024 | 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.
Sol
That fabulous blot of starshine squeezed through
a hole in the lightening sky…
I wanted to look right through it
but the uttermost beauty
is forbidden to our mortal eyes.
Yet I turned my eyes to it again,
and tried to stay…
I tried to look closer,
I think I saw an edge
of pure, celestial delight.
Maybe I will imagine more.
I said “good morning.”
June 4, 2017
It was a transience, a moment for understanding, again, that there is more to sunrise than meets the eye.
My poem “Sol” was published in my third collection of 64 poems, In other words: Poems for your eyes and ears.
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 2024 All rights reserved.
You’re down to one piece of bread…
…would you share it with anybody?
Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging
by Sebastian Junger
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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 | Oct 31, 2024 | Book reviews, Books, Human Nature, Theater and play reviews
slow-moving lava love…
Book review:
The Bridges of Madison County
Robert James Waller (1939-2017)
New York: Warner Books Inc., 1992
171 pages
The Bridges of Madison County was a notably popular new book. However, I’m aware that not everyone is a fan.
If you’re looking for highly stoked eroticism and high-rolling lives that throw off sparks when they touch, look elsewhere.
Frankly, for lots of tastes, good advice is: look elsewhere no matter what you’re looking for.
For me, Bridges documents the chance intersection of the putatively unremarkable lives of Francesca and Robert with all the heat and dazzle of slow-moving lava, without its destructive power. They come together, they permit each other to nourish their beautiful personae and they generate a passion that consumes without burning.
Francesca and Robert come together too late in their lives, after unbreakable commitments have been made to other cherished persons who, regrettably, are not like themselves.
I am drawn to the unsounded depths of their love and their absolute, cascading, undeniable recognition of each other as the unforgettable objects of their burgeoning desire.
They understand that they must be content with the short lifetime of their dalliance. They honor their love by deeply understanding its nature, and by accepting the permanent separation that their unyielding integrity requires.
Robert whispers to Francesca: “…this kind of certainty comes only once…”
The Bridges of Madison County is a love song, a courtship, a delicate primer on yearning, a too brief opportunity to know how it feels to be in love like that.
Give it a try.
p.s. Clint Eastwood and Meryl Streep made the movie version with the same title in 1995 (rated PG-13, 135 minutes). You’ll love it if you like the book.
Waller’s book and the movie equally reveal the ethereal bond between Robert and Francesca. There is frank eroticism, with different physical and philosophical elements in the film and book, and a shared electric vitality.
The film and the book offer stylistically divergent life dramas that converge to a singular powerful love, and a perpetual loneliness that Robert and Francesca cannot minimize.
Give the film a try.
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2024 All rights reserved.
Book review: A Cold Welcome
The culprit was global cooling,
500 years ago…
by Sam White
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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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