by Richard Subber | May 21, 2021 | Joys of reading, Language, My poetry, Poetry
doing what comes naturally…
In search of…
I wish I had a better way to say
the things I really want to hear today.
Alas, I don’t, and there’s the rub, you see?
The words I want won’t blossom here for me.
April 6, 2015
This is a sample of iambic pentameter, pure and simple.
For me, it often seems natural to write poetry in iambic meter, that is, words that seem to flow in a rhythm captured by an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable, repeat, repeat.
There’s no mystery about an iamb: think of a word like “enjoy,” the “en” is not stressed (not emphasized) and the “joy” is stressed (emphasized).
For me, this rhythm, when extended, creates a lilting, almost singsong style that is pleasing to the ear and to the eye.
Unlike some poets, I don’t determinedly write this way, line after line.
I’m sensitive to the intended and the spontaneous visual and aural rhythms as I compose my poetry, and I let the rhythm heighten the impact of what I’m writing.
The quatrain above is deliberately written in iambic pentameter.
It’s illustrative, but it’s not my most beautiful piece of work.
Usually I don’t let style cramp my choice of the right words.
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My poetry. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2021 All rights reserved.
Book review: “Bartleby, the Scrivener”
Loneliness beyond understanding…
by Herman Melville
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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”
Your comments are welcome—tell me what you’re thinking.
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by Richard Subber | Mar 30, 2021 | Book reviews, Books, Joys of reading, Language, Poetry, Reviews of other poets
even baseball in the dark…
Home Team: Poems About Baseball
by Edwin Romond
West Hartford, CT: Grayson Books, 2018
You really don’t have to be a baseball fan to feel the joy that just won’t quit in Romond’s offering of romantic poems about baseball.
I mean romantic in the sense of the 19th century Romantic Era, when practitioners in most of the arts were focused on the many dimensions of intense emotion and esthetic experience.
You will discover that Romond’s poetry has so much of longing, and recognition, and acceptance, and the joys we can find in everyday life, and Home Team has many versions of all that.
My favorite is “Baseball in the Dark,” a ripe recollection of a young boy’s dream that he could again hear radio broadcaster Mel Allen’s “summer voice going, going, on and on…telling me baseball in the dark.” That would be a downright good thing to do, and Romond knows a lot of those things.
You can check out Romond’s poetry books on his website, click here.
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2021 All rights reserved.
The poetic art of Grace Butcher
Poetry for reading out loud…
it’s that good
Book review: Child, House, World
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 | Feb 12, 2021 | American history, Book reviews, Books, Democracy, History, Power and inequality
…doing more good in America…
Book review:
American Character:
A History of the Epic Struggle
Between Individual Liberty and the Common Good
Colin Woodard (b1968)
Journalist
New York: Viking, 2016
308 pages
American Character is intuitive and informative analysis of what makes Americans tick, politically.
Woodard says we need to promote “fairness” in all its meanings if we want a shot at changing the success stories of Trump/laissez fair Republicans/Tea Party/the oligarchs. I reluctantly use the word “fairness” without any pretense of conveying the fullness of his meaning. It means a lot, in different ways—seriously, meaningfully, it’s different strokes for different folks.
I’m gonna read American Character again.
It’s easy to understand what Woodard is saying. He offers a sane and credible strategy for doing more good in America for all Americans.
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2021 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”
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by Richard Subber | Feb 2, 2021 | Book reviews, Books
“ Philip, I love ‘ee ”
Book review:
The Snow Goose
by Paul Gallico (1897-1976)
Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1960
58 pages
Paul Gallico (1897-1976)
Paul Gallico is an author I need to get to know better. The Snow Goose is my first attempt.
This justly famous short story is surprisingly simple in its construction and densely emotional in its impact. There are familiar plot elements: ugly old man meets beautiful young girl, and they develop a close relationship. In some ways one is moved to think of Silas Marner—there are both rich and rigid qualities in their love, never consummated, sharply constrained.
The snow goose imagery is pervasive. Gallico uses the obviously proper word pinion repeatedly and not always, perhaps, with the same definition in mind, but this is quibbling…despite Philip Rhayader’s intimate knowledge of the birds he paints, there is no compelling total image of the bird. What does a snow goose really look like?
The primitive eroticism of Rhayader’s relationship with the girl, Fritha, is bursting out of the story repeatedly before the final scenes. Think of the sensual heat of Girl With A Pearl Earring, deeply heartfelt and almost completely unexpressed. Vermeer painted the girl from life; Rhayader painted his girl from memory, a symbolic reflection of his restrained character and the repressed relationship.
The story line of Snow Goose is mostly mundane, but Gallico easily sustains a dramatic tension, although the Dunkirk evacuation scenes are almost a charade with the blunt Cockney accents dominating the dialog.
Snow Goose is eminently poetic—the ending that every reader can anticipate occurs with realistic sadness and realistic revelation. Fritha feels the words in her heart: “Philip, I love ‘ee.”
The long-patient reader is finally released to wordless exultation.
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I admit the abundant pleasures of re-reading The Snow Goose in February 2021. I happily engaged more fully with the character of the young girl Fritha, and the pathos of her isolation without parents in a hard community that took no notice of her friendship with the lonely artist. Fritha survives, and shares her memories and her private, splendid isolation with the beautiful bird.
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Among other treatments, this beautiful short story was transformed to film (television) in 1971 by the BBC and shown on the Hallmark Hall of Fame, with Richard Harris as Rhayader and Jenny Agutter as Fritha. See it in five installments on YouTube here.
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2021 All rights reserved.
Book review: The Chosen
Life: exuberant, and otherwise…
by Chaim Potok
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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 | Jan 20, 2021 | Joys of reading, Language, Poetry, Reviews of other poets
think about the galumphing that you’ve known…
I guess Lewis Carroll was thinking about voting when he wrote this…
Jabberwocky
’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
“Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!”
He took his vorpal sword in hand;
Long time the manxome foe he sought—
So rested he by the Tumtum tree
And stood awhile in thought.
And, as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!
One, two! One, two! And through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.
“And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!”
He chortled in his joy.
’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
by Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (Lewis Carroll) (1832-1898)
“Jabberwocky” was published in 1871 in Carroll’s book, Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There
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Poetry. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2021 All rights reserved.
Brown is the New White, another take on democracy
Steve Phillips is talking about demographics
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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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