by Richard Subber | Oct 15, 2024 | Reflections, Tidbits
A lesson for mornings…
“Life is wide. There’s room to take a new run at it.”
Ivan Doig (1939-2015)
American novelist
Our country is suffering in these parlous times. Optimism isn’t the first thing I think of when I wake each morning.
Nevertheless, this epigram from Ivan Doig is a lesson.
I’m going to keep working hard at taking a new run at life.
The track is wide, indeed.
There’s room to do some good things.
By the way, it’s a good bet you’ll like everything by Ivan Doig. My favorite is This House of Sky, his memoir of growing up in Montana. The Bartender’s Tale is really good, too.
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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…
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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”
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by Richard Subber | Oct 12, 2024 | Poetry, Tidbits
orange you going to read this?
Someone said, “Nothing rhymes with orange.”
I said, “No, it doesn’t.”
Take your time with this one.
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Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2024 All rights reserved.
For a change of pace,
read this book review
of one woman’s desperate childhood,
The Homeplace by Marilyn Nelson
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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 | Oct 10, 2024 | My poetry, Poetry, Reflections
talking to the animals…
Cat talk
She’s doing her cat thing,
nothing better to do.
Maybe that’s true,
but she won’t say it’s so,
she won’t budge,
and she won’t hunch a shoulder
in that warm spot,
and she won’t blink a yes or no
when you ask
the simplest thing,
or tilt her head
when you say hello,
she keeps her peace,
she stares as you bend down
to stroke her head,
she waits while you think about
leaving her alone,
maybe she can talk,
but doesn’t want to.
July 9, 2024
inspired by “Undercover Agent,” a painting by Jan Byrne
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My poetry. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2024 All rights reserved.
Book review: The Comanche Empire
the other story of the American West…
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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 | Oct 8, 2024 | Theater and play reviews
Versailles is what it used to be, mostly…
Movie review:
A Little Chaos
A Little Chaos (2014, rated R, 117 minutes) didn’t win any prizes but it’s a modest prize of a movie.
It’s a fictional story about the very real gardens at Versailles, the almost unimaginable residence for French kings that first existed in 1623 as a hunting lodge.
Kate Winslet, as Madame Sabine de Barra, rather stoically portrays a talented woman (garden designer) who cannot be ignored in an undeniably man’s world.
Alan Rickman adds some comic touches to his character as King Louis XIV, and he learns from Madame de Barra and encourages her to design the spectacular Ballroom Grove (a tourist destination today).
There is an almost incidental love interest that frames the final, almost frivolous moments of the movie.
The drama is in the intrigues and the blunderings and the jealousies of the men who surround Madame de Barra and make her life difficult.
(Rated R for two seconds of inoffensive nudity)
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Movie Review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2024 All rights reserved.
Old Friends (book review)
Tracy Kidder tells truth about old age…
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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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by Richard Subber | Oct 6, 2024 | Language, My poetry, Poetry, Reflections
…it soaked the upright apes…
I’m intrigued by the poetic adventure of ascribing human attributes to things in the natural world.
That afternoon, there was a potent storm.
I imagined that many of those big fat raindrops had pounded the old driveway many times over the years—
you know, rain comes down, and water evaporates up…
Maybe raindrops have favorite places…
It looks like rain
With ancient fury, the rain comes,
stoked again by antique thunders,
kindled again by strokes
that sear the sagging sky.
Old Zeus once stirred this brawl
of sound and spark
and wind and wet,
he little knew his power
to brew eternal cycles
of Sturm und Drang.
This is the same descent of rain
that soaked the upright apes,
and the pharaohs,
and the Thracian warriors,
and the Goths, the Viking raiders,
the samurai, the Chiricahua children,
the hardy gauchos,
the slaves in every time,
and the beans of every summer.
This rain has filled this air before,
these heavy drops
have always done such drenching,
they know their way to earth,
they know just what to do.
July 8, 2016
My poem “It looks like rain” was published in my second collection of 47 new free verse and haiku poems, Seeing far: Selected poems. You can buy it on Amazon (paperback and Kindle), or get it free in Kindle Unlimited, click here
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My poetry. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2024 All rights reserved.
Book review: Forced Founders
by Woody Holton
The so-called “Founding Fathers”
weren’t the only ones
who helped to shape our independence…
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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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