by Richard Subber | Jul 10, 2025 | American history, Book reviews, Books, History, Human Nature, Power and inequality
The Indians had a point of view…
Book review:
Red Brethren:
The Brothertown and Stockbridge Indians
and the Problem of Race in Early America
by David J. Silverman
Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2010
279 pages
Red Brethren is a scholarly deep dive into the experiences and mindsets of the First Americans who first tried to tolerate and later resisted the imperious impositions of the European colonists in North America.
The Indians left almost no record in their own writing, but Silverman exercises the customary technique of extrapolating Indian thoughts and attitudes from the written European record.
In the context of the widespread (not universal, still controversial) understanding that “race” is a social construct and a destructive concept, it is a bit puzzling that Silverman uses various manifestations of “race” in his analysis.
Nevertheless, he makes it plain that we have so much to learn about what the indigenous peoples thought of the European invaders, and how the thinking of our Red Brethren changed over time.
* * * * * *
Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2025 All rights reserved.
Movie review: Same Time, Next Year
all-American adultery, oh yeah…
–
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”
* * * * * *
by Richard Subber | Jul 6, 2025 | Book reviews, Books
no fireworks here…
Book review:
The Awakening
and Selected Stories of Kate Chopin
by Kate Chopin (1850-1904)
Louisiana author
New York: Simon & Schuster Paperbacks, 2004
296 pages
There are no fireworks and little spark in Kate Chopin’s prose.
Her characters and her plots seem quotidian at best, and more like hum-drum.
In her time she was a ground-breaking writer of feminist themes, but her stories simply are not thrilling in the 21st century.
As I tried to read The Awakening, I realized that I was trying to imagine how it would have felt doing the same thing 125 years ago. I failed.
* * * * * *
Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2025 All rights reserved.
Book review: “The Gentle Boy”
The Puritans had a dark side…
by Nathaniel Hawthorne
–
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”
* * * * * *
by Richard Subber | Jul 3, 2025 | Joys of reading, Language, Tidbits
Robert was a deep thinker…
“Blue” was one of his favorite words.
He liked the feeling it made on his lips
and tongue when he said it.
Words have physical feeling, not just meaning,
he remembered thinking when he was young.
Quote from The Bridges of Madison County by Robert James Waller
New York: Warner Books Inc., 1992
171 pages
p. 8
* * * * * *
Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2025 All rights reserved.
“The beginning is always today.”
(quote, Mary Shelley)
so get started…
–
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”
* * * * * *
by Richard Subber | Jun 24, 2025 | American history, Book reviews, Books, Democracy, History, Politics, Power and inequality
Drucker thought he had time to think about it…
Book review:
Concept of the Corporation
by Peter F. Drucker (1909-2005)
Educator, business guru
New York: The John Day Company, 1946
1972 edition with new Preface and new Epilogue by author
It’s almost eerie to read insightful critiques of big business written 80 and 55 years ago. Drucker’s commentary is artful, candid, deeply informed, and instructive—but far less so now than it was in the past.
Serious rumination about the role of the corporation is less in vogue now than it was two generations ago, much to our detriment.
Drucker was too early to feel the ill wind that blows when the corporation imposes its awesome power on its employees and society as a whole.
Concept of the Corporation is an historical gem, but it doesn’t touch the hot nerves that drive the destructive role that big business has created for itself.
* * * * * *
Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2025 All rights reserved.
1491 by Charles Mann (book review)
…lost American legacies
–
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”
* * * * * *
by Richard Subber | Jun 19, 2025 | Book reviews, Books, Joys of reading, Language
Moby-Dick and stuff….
I know whale tales aren’t for everyone.
If you’re still with me, you might be interested to know that Herman Melville’s iconic whale story was published 174 years ago in London, and then, a month later, in New York.
The original title is Moby-Dick; or, The Whale. Melville actually went to sea as a crewman on a whaling vessel, and based his novel in part on a real sperm whale named Mocha Dick, known to South Pacific sailors in the 1840s.
Early in his career Melville was briefly acclaimed for some of his South Pacific stories, such as Typee, but he was obscure during the last 30 years of his life. He earned only $1,200 or so from the sale of about 3,200 copies of Moby-Dick, which was out of print when he died in 1891.
A first American edition of the book can easily be secured if you have about $80,000 to spend.
Melville wrote in a variety of genres—again, not for all tastes. I’m a big fan of Moby-Dick, and I’m also an advocate for Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street. Nothing of the South Pacific in this one. The circumstances of this desiccated short story are curious, even eccentric, incredulous. The withered and aloof Bartleby is presented, examined and disdained, until his very dispirited isolation makes him the object of the narrator’s genuine but increasingly troubled caretaking.
Don’t overlook Billy Budd, Sailor. It’s a searing morality play.
You may be surprised to know that Melville also wrote poetry. One critic has somewhat ponderously suggested that Moby-Dick is filled with Melville’s incipient poetry. I certainly believe that a story can contain a poem, but I don’t see anything like that in Moby-Dick.
* * * * * *
Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2025 All rights reserved.
A Farewell to Arms (book review)
classic Ernest Hemingway
with relentlessly realistic dialogue…
–
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”
* * * * * *
by Richard Subber | Jun 14, 2025 | Joys of reading, My poetry, Poetry
…only small shadows…
Dreamery #1
The scraggly disarray of an old farm yard
was the milieu,
not a real place in my memory,
but a scene I could understand.
The dream was realistic in its detail,
jumbled in its action.
I’m no farmer, I had no impulse
to harvest any dream theme,
I was there in fact.
I was a witness without a question.
I felt no urge to end it.
I had no curious thought.
In the old barn I sensed
a history in every damp corner,
an unfinished story in every heap
of debris that marked a process without progress,
in remnants of machines,
in the gear of abandoned projects
that made only small shadows
on the untidy floor.
The cowgirl and the kids who urged
their clattering horses
through this carelessly cluttered scene
were noisy,
but I couldn’t make out their words…
Outside a squad of ragtag soldiers
shambled into view,
wearing remnants of antique uniforms,
maybe they had guns,
with no fierce mien among them…
these were militia, maybe,
with no impulse to rush to battle,
no inspiration to huzzah,
no flag to die for…
Their leader was a faded heroine of dream time,
a broad-hipped fat woman
in some style of tunic,
no memorable face,
yelling for services and a campsite and supplies,
in some style of a martinet, it seemed,
but not convincing…
I sensed that there was no apparent reason
for this ersatz troop to be there,
it seemed that they wanted
to be somewhere else.
For a moment, I felt some sympathy.
July 27, 2017
Often I don’t remember my dreams. I was aware that there was no particular reason to remember this one. It was not a particular dream. This is one particular way of saying that.
My poem “Dreamery #1” was published in my second collection of 47 poems, Seeing far: Selected poems. You can buy it on Amazon (paperback and Kindle), or get it free in Kindle Unlimited, click here
* * * * * *
My poetry. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2025 All rights reserved.
A poet is a “maker”
…and it doesn’t have to rhyme…
–
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.
* * * * * *
