by Richard Subber | May 20, 2023 | Human Nature, Tidbits
the other side…
(Ann Kelmot) “The dead are not so very far away.
They’re just on the other side of the wall.
It’s us on this side who are all of us so…”
(Sherlock Holmes) “…alone.”
Ian McKellen plays Sherlock Holmes, Hattie Morahan plays Ann Kelmot
in Mr. Holmes, a 2014 film by Lionsgate
…I’m alone, but I’m lucky to have so many memories
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Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2023 All rights reserved.
On the Beach by Nevil Shute (book review)
It isn’t out of date…
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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 | May 16, 2023 | Language, My poetry, Poetry
The pushing, potent, heaving…
Poesy
This is, nearly, what it’s like.
Magma flowing cool, I think,
is nearly right,
the swelling flow,
quite nearly right.
The pushing, potent,
familiar overflowing burden,
is quite nearly truly right.
The heaving rush in one clean moment,
of one clean, bursting, raptured ideal,
it speaks the straining gush of simple words
that stream around and through,
cool fire sparking
as they merge and touch
and match and lodge together.
This is nearly, quite truly,
nearly certain,
quite nearly right.
April 3, 1996
Sanibel Island, Florida
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My poetry. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2023 All rights reserved.
How does a poem end?
“Finis,” my thoughts (my poem)
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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 | May 14, 2023 | American history, Book reviews, Books, History, Joys of reading, Revolutionary War
…John Adams,
in the thick of it…
Book review:
John Adams
by David McCullough (1933-2022)
Simon & Schuster, New York, 2001
751 pages
Maybe you’re like me. Maybe you don’t think biography is the best way to do history. David McCullough’s Pulitzer Prize-winner is a reason to change your mind a bit.
John Adams, simply, is a really good book. McCullough helps you to warm up to this American icon and to his personal experience in leading the American Revolution and the first formative years of the American republic.
Adams, our first vice president and second president, was among the few who were in the thick of it from the beginning, and he never shrank from doing what he expansively viewed as his duty to his new country.
McCullough’s prose is a delightful experience for the serious historian and for the armchair dabbler who likes a good read. From cover to cover, John Adams is a lush, genuine presentation of a man, his loved ones, his career, his commitment to do good works and his never-flagging appreciation that the object of government should be to do the people’s business and make possible a decent life for all.
Adams, of course, couldn’t stop himself from being a politician, and he wasn’t the nicest kind.
The Alien and Sedition Acts were among the lowest points of American politics.
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2023 All rights reserved.
Book review: Who Built America?
…including people
who got their hands dirty
by Christopher Clark and Nancy Hewitt
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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 | May 9, 2023 | American history, Book reviews, Books, History, Human Nature, Politics
we ask too much…
Book review:
What It Is Like to Go to War
by Karl Marlantes
New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2011
256 pages
There are two kinds of readers who can presume to learn something from Marlantes’ second book, What It Is Like to Go to War: those who have combat experience, and those who don’t.
I guess you will feel just about every emotion while you’re reading it.
Of course we ask too much of our men and women who go to war.
Of course, sadly, we don’t know how to say “thank you” and we find it hard to figure out how to say “you don’t have to tell us everything you did, unless you want to.”
Of course we don’t say often enough “you’re still a good person.”
Marlantes’ first book was Matterhorn, a robustly intuitive assessment of the mind and experience of a warfighter.
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2023 All rights reserved.
A poet is a “maker”
…and it doesn’t have to rhyme…
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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 | Apr 20, 2023 | Human Nature, Theater and play reviews
feeling truly happy…
Movie review:
Good Will Hunting
1997
Rating R
126 minutes
Starring Robin Williams, Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, Minnie Driver
There are several plot lines in Good Will Hunting, and of course you know about this one: genius janitor solves math problems on blackboard at night and also has fist fights in bars because his life is out of control.
Good Will Hunting is about a lot more than the action in Boston, and the friendships of Southie boys who support each other in a nether world of poverty.
Good Will Hunting is a revelation of what love is all about. Sean (Robin Williams) steers his therapy sessions with Will (Matt Damon) through ever more confessional truths about his own love for his dead wife, and challenges Will to engage with Skylar (Minnie Driver) because she can be part of his good life.
The gotcha scene is Sean and Will on the park bench: in a longish monologue, Sean says to Will “you can’t tell me what it feels like to wake up next to a woman, and feel truly happy,” and Will admits his longing with silence.
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Movie review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2023 All rights reserved.
Home Team: Poems About Baseball (book review)
Edwin Romond hits another homer…
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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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