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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by Richard Subber | Oct 3, 2024 | Book reviews, Books, Human Nature, Theater and play reviews
bergin makes it worse…
Play review:
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
A 1962 play by Edward Albee
New York: Scribner Classics, 1962, 2003
243 pages
It’s not a feel-good play.
After you start to move again after you finish reading it, probably you’ll end up thinking that your life is better than you thought it was. George and Martha do a pretty good job of proving that hell on earth is possible.
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? is almost a non-stop exaltation of how to be mean, sad, vicious, heartbroken, desperate, delirious, murderous, inhibited, ignorant, ambitious, empty, and longing, more or less all at the same time.
George and Martha, an aging couple on a rundown college campus, stage their terrible show for the benefit of a young professor, Nick, and his young wife, Honey, in the wee hours of a morning when each of them has something better to do, but isn’t doing it.
None of them make you think of the Cleaver family.
Arthur Hill was George and Uta Hagen was Martha in the first stage presentation in October 1962.
In the 1966 film version, Richard Burton was George and Elizabeth Taylor was Martha.
Both productions are slam bang downers, just like the play.
No production of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? will make you think of the Cleavers.
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Play review. Movie review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2024 All rights reserved.
Book review: Shantung Compound
They didn’t care much
about each other…
by Langdon Gilkey
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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 1, 2024 | My poetry, Poetry
The Book of Days
The dawn’s early light can be pleasure enough for the whole day.
There are words enough to tell the story of “the temptation of day to come.”
It is my delight to write some of them for your delectation.
Oh yeah
The sudsy part of the sky
didn’t cover the pale
of flagrant blue,
an eager light of day
was there at the tree line,
it was dawn, all right.
April 15, 2024
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My poetry. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2024 All rights reserved.
Book review: “The Gentle Boy”
The Puritans had a dark side…
by Nathaniel Hawthorne
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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 | Sep 28, 2024 | American history, Books, History, Power and inequality
not what you learned in school…
Book review:
Facing East from Indian Country:
A Native History of Early America
Daniel K. Richter (b1954)
American historian, a Pulitzer Prize finalist
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001
You can count on Richter to provide a full course meal of insights and commentaries and knowledge about the original peoples of North America.
Dig in to Facing East from Indian Country to learn about how the Indians felt and what they understood about the Europeans who invaded their lands.
Nearly all of what we know about the Indians in pre-colonial and colonial times was written down by Europeans, but Richter is dedicated to discerning the Indians’ meaning, intent and recognition from the contexts and styles of those accounts.
This is not the American history you learned in school.
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2024 All rights reserved.
Book review: Shawshank Redemption
A world I do not want to know…
by Stephen King
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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 | Sep 26, 2024 | Tidbits
spread the word
The wise one said:
“I’ve started telling everyone
about the benefits of eating dried grapes.
It’s all about raisin awareness.”
Just take some time to think about what’s important to you.
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Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2024 All rights reserved.
Book review: “Bartleby, the Scrivener”
Loneliness beyond understanding…
by Herman Melville
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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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