The Sea-Hawk…book review

The Sea-Hawk…book review

…good storytelling…

 

 

Book review:

 

The Sea-Hawk

by Rafael Sabatini (1875-1950)

 

New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1924

366 pages

 

Sabatini always invites the reader to get comfortable, to enjoy reading for literate pleasure, to relish good storytelling.

The Sea-Hawk has enough swash and buckle for any Sabatini fan.

Sir Oliver is a Cornish lord, a superman, and a wannabe corsair who can more or less bend steel with his bare hounds. Rosamund is the gentle lady of his heart’s desire. They get together at the end, but they have some swamps and fire and soul-searching to go through before they get to that entirely predictable end.

No reader—with or without delectable experience of Sabatini’s literary style—could fail to imagine the final outcome after reading just a few pages.

This inevitable foreknowledge is part of the appeal. You know how it’s going to turn out. You know that Sir Oliver and Rosamund will be smitten with self-doubt, and enlarged by courageous idealism, and sustained by everlasting love.

Sabatini makes it entirely comfortable to enjoy every minute of it, and he has the civilized decency to avoid any mention of heaving bosoms. The reader’s imagination has its own work to do.

 

p.s. The Sea-Hawk is a lot like Sabatini’s Scaramouche, except there’s water.

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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2024 All rights reserved.

 

Book review: The Snow Goose

…sensual drama, eminently poetic…

by Paul Gallico

click here

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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listen to the stones…”ken,” my poem

listen to the stones…”ken,” my poem

that entish slang…

 

 

ken

 

The words of stones

   come soft,

and there are whispers,

and the birds’ chirping

   is a refrain,

and the trees talk

   mostly to themselves

      in their entish slang…

 

Are we listening?

Do we give them moments

   to speak as they will?

Can we trust the words

   that we barely understand?

Do we need to hear

   the stones and their mountains?

Shall we learn from these scant words

   a new way of knowing?

Shall we hear the worlds

   that exist with us,

      persist without us?

Shall we allow those words

   to fill our ears and minds and hearts?

 

Is there new meaning

   so near to our ken?

 

June 20, 2024

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My poetry. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2024 All rights reserved.

 

“The beginning is always today.”

(quote, Mary Shelley)

so get started…

click here

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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Night by Elie Wiesel…book review

Night by Elie Wiesel…book review

a corpse in the mirror

 

 

Book review:

Night

 

by Elie Wiesel (1928-2016)

Buchenwald survivor

Stella Rodway, trans.

 

New York: Bantam Books, 1958

109 pages

 

In Night, Elie Wiesel tells his story of being a teenage boy in the death camps of Nazi Germany during World War II.

He uses the necessary words, and he speaks from the depths of his being.

He lost his mother, his father, and his young sister in the camps.

He was liberated from Buchenwald by American soldiers on April 11, 1945.

Wiesel recalls that after he was freed, he saw his reflection in a mirror for the first time since he was transported:

 

“From the depths of the mirror, a corpse gazed back at me.”

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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2024 All rights reserved.

 

Home Team: Poems About Baseball (book review)

Edwin Romond hits another homer…

click here

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”

*   *   *   *   *   *

“…being human is a guest house…” …Rumi (1207-1273)

“…being human is a guest house…” …Rumi (1207-1273)

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

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”

*   *   *   *   *   *

“duchess with a bird”…my poem

“duchess with a bird”…my poem

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.

 

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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