by Richard Subber | Jul 30, 2021 | Book reviews, Books, Human Nature, Reflections
Learn to think about being old…
Book review:
Old Friends
by Tracy Kidder (b1945)
Boston, Houghton Mifflin Company, 1993
352 pages
Tracy Kidder is an old friend, and I welcome any opportunity to read something he wrote. There is vigor and bitter reality and calm truth and pulsing delight in his stories.
Whatever your age, try Old Friends. You’re going to be someone’s old friend, sooner or later. You can learn to think about how it’s going to be.
Like Kidder’s other books, Old Friends is in its own category. Nevertheless, it has themes you’ll find in his other books. It contains some kinds of the loneliness expressed in Strength in What Remains (2009), and it echoes some of the humanity that pervades Among Schoolchildren (1989).
You’ll be surprised as you get to know Lou and Joe and the others.
They’re like people you already know, and like real people you’re going to get to know.
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2021 All rights reserved.
Mary Jane Oliver, R. I. P.
She wrote so many of the right words…
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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 | Jun 22, 2021 | American history, Book reviews, Books, History, Politics, Power and inequality, World history
profitable, powerful, vicious…
Book review:
For All the Tea in China:
How England Stole the World’s Favorite Drink
and Changed History
by Sarah Rose
New York: Viking, Penguin Group, 2010
This is a credible account of how tea from China became a worldwide drink.
With commanding competence, Rose relates the intrepid life of Robert Fortune, and the depressingly familiar tale of a giant corporation running amok.
The East India Company in England was an extremely vicious, extremely powerful, and extremely profitable company for more than two hundred years. It was tea from the East India Company that got dumped into Boston harbor on December 16, 1773. After a bloody 1857 war of its own making in India, the company was abruptly dissolved by the British Parliament. Rose says: “…the company had amassed possessions to rival Charlemagne’s and created an empire on which the sun never set; it was the first global multinational and the largest corporation history has ever known. Yet it failed spectacularly at one significant task: to govern India in peace.” No surprise there.
For my taste, the greater value of For All the Tea in China is the examination of how the commerce and consumption of tea shaped worldwide politics, warfare, and society. Tea reduced famine in Europe. Tea taxes financed Britain’s imperial expansion. Increased tea drinking—and increased sugar consumption—made the British sugar colonies important in British commerce and politics. Centuries of monopoly in tea production and engagement with Europeans altered the political and cultural development of China.
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2021 All rights reserved.
Book review: American Colonies
So many and so much
came before the Pilgrims
by Alan Taylor
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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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by Richard Subber | Jun 5, 2021 | American history, Book reviews, Books, History, Human Nature, Politics
…the Irish weren’t the only ones…
Book review:
How the Irish Became White
by Noel Ignatiev (1940-2019)
American author and historian
New York: Routledge, 1995
Ignatiev offers enough detail and context to satisfy historians of every stripe.
For the less ambitious reader, there may be a bit more than she cares to know in How the Irish Became White.
Of course, I certainly don’t presume to summarize the author’s careful exposition in 233 pages.
If you really want to know more about how non-black immigrants allowed and persuaded themselves to buy in to the systemic racism that flourished in America since the 17th century, dig in to How the Irish Became White.
One sure point is: don’t pick on the Irish exclusively. They certainly weren’t alone in their transgressions.
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2021 All rights reserved.
We Were Soldiers Once…and Young
…way too much death (book review)
Lt. Gen. Harold G. Moore (ret.)
and Joseph L. Galloway
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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 | 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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