by Richard Subber | Nov 18, 2022 | Language, My poetry, Poetry, Reflections
my restless eye
Whither…
I do not see the next turn in my road.
I know there will be choosing,
I know that I cannot turn
both left and right
as need there be,
that some roads
will be traveled only once,
that in my living
I may turn back, betimes,
but the journey is always different
in the second passage.
The known past dims,
and my unknown future
will brighten with every dawn,
and I know there is no certain map
of my next steps—
I am content to round the next turn,
and so to look ahead
to spy the turning
that invites my restless eye.
January 12, 2020
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My poetry. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2022 All rights reserved.
Book review: The Cradle Place
by Thomas Lux
poems wrapped in a wet rag…
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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 16, 2022 | Book reviews, Books, Human Nature
…reserved but spritely humorous…
Book review:
Tales from a Free-Range Childhood
by Donald Davis (b1944)
Winston-Salem, NC: John F. Blair, Publisher, 2011
239 pages
Davis is a renowned storyteller, in person and in print.
He offers very believable recollections of his childhood in this exceptionally prosaic collection.
Tales from a Free-Range Childhood is a pleasing succession of reserved but spritely humorous accounts of the kind of joys and scrapes that you probably experienced, mostly.
Davis knows how to put it into words.
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2022 All rights reserved.
Fire in the Lake (book review)
you should have read it in 1972…
by Frances FitzGerald
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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 12, 2022 | Book reviews, Books, Human Nature
you don’t have many close friends…
Book review:
Friends: Understanding the Power
of our Most Important Relationships
by Robin Dunbar
London: Little, Brown, 2021
424 pages
This is a great book.
Robin Dunbar fans will recognize his deeply informed, very readable prose, and his comfortable and spectacular familiarity with quite a number of well-researched points of view.
Friends will confirm what you already know, on some level: friends and close family members are essential in your personal and social life, and you don’t have very many of them.
Typically, a person has five close friends/family members with whom she can share anything and everything, as often as possible. These five intimates are part of the circle of about 15 “best friends” who are nurtured and enjoyed in the greater part of the time you spend socializing, that is, being with and being in contact with other people.
Impersonal contact via social media is not a substitute for actually spending time with your friends. (By the way, nobody has 897 “friends” on Faceboook or SnapChat—if you think you do, try calling them and getting them to meet you for coffee or anything else to drink.)
Staying in touch with friends is especially important for old-timers. You can literally live longer if you maintain some active friendships.
The basis thing about friendship is trust: you know the other person well enough to understand how he thinks, and you trust him to act accordingly, and you know you can ask him for help if you need it.
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2022 All rights reserved.
Book review:
Moral Tribes by Joshua Greene
sincere, but off the mark…
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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 6, 2022 | My poetry, Poetry
…he picks his hopscotch way…
Singleton
Too much of winter remains
to rehearse a song of spring…
The wetland flaunts its barren peat,
its withered stems,
a wastrel tree…
The debris of winter is a dowdy mantle
on the tired earth,
a bleak board for the lean pilgrim
as he scouts my yard,
he picks his hopscotch way,
his red breast dabbles color
in the last of autumn’s arid leaves…
…as he turns to me,
I whisper: “welcome”
February 26, 2020
Mr. Robin was too early, but I happily waited to see him again.
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My poetry. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2022 All rights reserved.
Book review: The Snow Goose
…sensual drama, eminently poetic…
by Paul Gallico
–
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 | Nov 4, 2022 | Book reviews, Books, Democracy, Politics, Power and inequality
We’re all Americans…
Book review:
Brown is the New White:
How the Demographic Revolution
has Created a New American Majority
by Steve Phillips
New York: The New Press, 2016
Phillips offers blockbuster data that spells out the demographic reality: a progressive, multiracial majority exists in the United States. It’s up to the Democratic Party to take the lead and serve this majority in ways that will benefit all Americans.
Phillips tells it like it is: Democrats lose at the polls when progressive whites and progressive voters of color don’t think it’s worth their time to vote. It happens too often.
Brown is the New White says the long game is to forget about the mythical “white swing vote” and pay attention to the increasing segment of the electorate that is not white. We’re all Americans here.
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2022 All rights reserved.
Book review: The Sea Runners
…it informs, it does not soar…
by Ivan Doig
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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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