by Richard Subber | Aug 13, 2024 | Theater and play reviews
wholesome, believable, nice…
Movie review:
Starman
1984
Rated PG
115 minutes
Break the egg labeled Close Encounters of the Third Kind and break the egg labeled Jane Eyre, and scramble them with some special sauce, and you get Starman.
You mix your basic alien lands on Earth story line with love at a slow burn, and then give Jeff Bridges (the “Starman”) a chance to theatrically show how hard it is to learn the English language after you crawl out of the spaceship.
Several characters rise to the challenge of answering the obvious question: how do we deal with a being from another planet who visits Earth with no obvious threatening intent?
The good guys win in this story, and Jenny (Karen Allen) learns a lot more than anyone else about a different kind of life out there in space.
The story is wholesome, there’s some action, Bridges and Allen make a believably nice couple, and you don’t have to wonder too much about how the story is going to end.
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Movie review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2024 All rights reserved.
iambic pentameter, y’know?
da DUH, da DUH, and stuff…
“In search of”…my poem
–
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 | Aug 10, 2024 | Language, My poetry, Poetry, Reflections, Tidbits
a chime in the dark
Another time
That single chime,
sometime in night,
there is no rhyme,
try as I might
I cannot conjure
a dancing wight
who sings that tune,
no song sublime,
no twist of rune
that I can write.
I let the chime expire,
I savor it entire,
perhaps Great Pan
may favor it
to puff his pipes,
and thrill the mime
in pagan rite,
in distant time.
May 8, 2024
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My poetry. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2024 All rights reserved.
Book review: An Empire Divided
King George and his ministers
wanted the Caribbean sugar islands
more than they wanted the 13 colonies…
by Andrew Jackson O’Shaughnessy
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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 | Aug 8, 2024 | American history, Book reviews, Books, History, Revolutionary War
the way it was…
Book review:
The History of the American Revolution vol. II
by David Ramsay
New York: Russell & Russell, 1789, 1793, 1968
360 pages
One of the best reasons for reading The History of the American Revolution is that it was written by an educated physician who actually served in the Revolutionary War.
David Ramsay wrote a book that is mostly play-by-play. The context is who did what and when.
There’s not a lot of deep thinking about the motivations of the politicians and generals on either side.
The reader can imagine that this is the way that Huntley and Brinkley might have reported the Revolutionary War.
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2024 All rights reserved.
Book review:
The American Revolution: A History
The “Founders” were afraid
of “democracy”…
by Gordon S. Wood
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 | Aug 6, 2024 | Human Nature, Tidbits
talk it up…
Samuel Adams (1722-1803) said that friendship,
at its best,
is “thinking aloud together.”
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Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2024 All rights reserved.
Book review: Ethan Frome
not being satisfied with less…
by Edith Wharton
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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 | Aug 4, 2024 | Book reviews, Books, Joys of reading, Language
“Each work is new.”
Book review:
The Eye of the Story: Selected Essays and Reviews
by Eudora Alice Welty (1909-2001)
American short story writer and novelist, Pulitzer Prize winner
New York: Random House, 1977
355 pages
The Eye of the Story is lush, literate, filled with almost languid richness.
I can only imagine being so well read that I could recognize all of her references to other writers and the vast literature of novels and short stories. I envy the breadth of her engagement with the world of fiction.
I’m more interested in what she has to say about writing.
“We who encounter words used in certain ways are persuaded by them to be brought mind and heart within the presence, the power, of the imagination” (p. 134).
“Each work is new” (p. 135). Welty is talking about novels, but this also is true, so true, of poetry. She observes that, in the fiction of her contemplation, “words have been found for which there may be no other words” (p. 137).
“The imagination has to be involved, and more—ignited. How much brighter than the symbol can be the explicit observation that springs firsthand from deep and present feeling…” (p. 139).
“It is through the shaping of the work in the hands of the artist that you most nearly come to know what can be known, on the page, of his mind and heart, and his as apart from the others. No other saw life in an ordering exactly like this” (p. 144).
I find affirmation in The Eye of the Story. Welty declares that writing is an art that uses the literally infinite array of words in sequence to create a spectacular, unique exhibition of what’s in the writer’s mind and in her heart.
“Each work is new.” I believe that each poem is unique. Each engaged reader takes a new step on new ground each time he reads the poem.
The poet opens a new window in her mind each time she takes the quill in hand.
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2024 All rights reserved.
A poem about the right thing
…and the lesser incarnation…
“Vanity”
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”
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