by Richard Subber | Sep 8, 2026 | Language, My poetry, Poetry
each layered wave…
Ashore
This place, it has no words for me.
The ocean makes its thrum,
it pulls the bow across the longest string…
Each layered wave aspires to end in surf,
and lightly bears its encumbering crest,
wavers at the sandy lip
and rolls beneath the swell,
makes room for every motion
that was born afar in blue water,
and sidles now to make a final turn,
becomes mere rhythm…
May 6, 2021
Ogunquit, ME
It was high tide at the Beachmere Inn.
The broad curve of the bay accepted the languid procession of modest waves…
it all seemed so unexceptional,
but I know that each wave is unique until it gets to the shore line.
The tableau did not speak to me.
I know that my presence was not needed.
Published in Creative Inspirations, January-February 2023.
My poem “Ashore” was published in my eighth collection of 57 poems, Empyrean: new poems.
You can buy it on Amazon (paperback and Kindle),
or get it free in Kindle Unlimited, search for “Richard Carl Subber”
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My poetry. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2026 All rights reserved.
A Farewell to Arms (book review)
classic Ernest Hemingway
with relentlessly realistic dialogue…
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In high meadows: poems abide with 60 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 | Sep 6, 2026 | Poetry, Reviews of other poets
Got “repining”?
I read lots of poetry—colonial, classic American, modern—and I don’t find much that I like.
This is puzzling to me. I think hard about what I like and dislike about poetry, especially my own poetry. I’m still not prepared to offer any explanation much beyond my sincere failure to discern anything meaningful in the kind of poetry I classify as “obscure,” you know, the wayward romp through disconnected words and disjoint images, and the wanton disregard of verb tense/pronoun antecedents/subject and verb relationships/sentence structure…I think you may have seen this kind of wantonly weird stuff:
“Sky falls cloud sheep bray at starry islands in my hoping
are them my lost love I step around the dog poo…”
I just rapped that out this minute. No poetic inspiration involved. It doesn’t make me proud. I’m trying to get to a point:
I’ve read a bit of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882). Longfellow was a lyric poet who tried his hand at free verse, although much of his work is constrained to the often stultifying shackle of line after line and page after page of rhyme. Longfellow writes at length. I confess I can’t make myself keep turning the pages to read “Evangeline” and “The Song of Hiawatha.” I do understand that this fashion of poetry was written and enjoyed before the successive advents of radio, TV, Sony Walkman and the internet. I guess reading a poem for an hour or so was more doable in the 19th century.
Longfellow does offer something to me in his more bite-size poetry. He was a capable wordsmith and he dreamed out images and insights and perspectives that appeal to me, and even nudge me to wakefulness.
In “Snow-Flakes” he placidly describes a snowfall:
“Out of the bosom of the Air,
…The troubled sky reveals
The grief it feels.
This is the poem of the air…”
In “The Rainy Day” he says something we all know:
“…Be still, sad heart! and cease repining;
Behind the clouds is the sun still shining;
Thy fate is the common fate of all,
Into each life some rain must fall,
Some days must be dark and dreary.”
Thus, in Longfellow, something of poetry.
Admit it, we don’t use “repining” often enough
in our casual conversations.
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Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2026 All rights reserved.
Book review: A Cold Welcome
The culprit was global cooling,
500 years ago…
by Sam White
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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 | Sep 1, 2026 | 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.
Casserole
A plump expanse,
delicious reds,
maybe good enough to eat,
the vault is filled,
it lures the eye,
it makes a feast.
May 13, 2026
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My poetry. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2026 All rights reserved.
Book review: Shawshank Redemption
A world I do not want to know…
by Stephen King
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In high meadows: poems abide with 60 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 | Aug 25, 2026 | My poetry, Poetry
take a quick look
Escape
Hustling through the sky,
who knows where it goes,
this scumbled track on the move,
it has no final stop in mind,
it runs, it flows,
it escapes to another sky,
and far away,
it thins, it slows,
it fades.
May 31, 2026
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My poetry. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2026 All rights reserved.
Book review: The Snow Goose
…sensual drama, eminently poetic…
by Paul Gallico
–
In high meadows: poems abide with 60 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 | Aug 20, 2026 | My poetry, Poetry, Reflections
filling the horizons
green, green
Green is everywhere,
it’s in the trees,
covers the ground,
it sprawls,
fills the horizons,
boasts its green-ness,
sings of life,
hums its faithful hue,
it welcomes me,
this color of joy.
June 4, 2026
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My poetry. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2026 All rights reserved.
Book review: The Comanche Empire
the other story of the American West…
–
In high meadows: poems abide with 60 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 | Aug 18, 2026 | Book reviews, Books, Joys of reading, Language
…death is an anticlimax…
Book review:
Les Liaisons Dangereuses
by Pierre-Ambroise Choderlos de Laclos
Originally published 1782
Translated as Dangerous Liaisons by Ernest Dowson, New York: Doubleday, 1998
Illustrations by Sylvain Sauvage
Les Liaisons Dangereuses is not a garden of delight.
This is a book about love, but the reader will find precious little of it in these pages.
An acquaintance dismissed this voluptuous tale, thus: “All they do is talk.”
Let’s begin there. The language is rich. I daresay that Laclos turns language into an erogenous zone in Les Liaisons Dangereuses.
If you aspire to a working understanding of good and evil, you could do worse than listen to the riveting chatter of the leading personae, who choose each word with careful, deliciously ribald, austerely cruel, and domineering intent. You really don’t want to be a friend, and you most assuredly don’t want to be an enemy.
Men, en garde! The Marquise de Merteuil impulsively thinks of cojones as table ornaments.
Ladies, away! The Vicomte de Valmont is a pirate lover, he sees women as prize ships ready for boarding.
One might wish to believe that the others are innocents: Cécile Volanges, Danceny, the Présidente de Tourvel. But, hold. Each of them seeks to play the game of love, but they are hardly able to distinguish winning from losing.
Yes, this is a boundless exposé of the worst elements—of human intrigue, self indulgence, hubris, vaunting egos, and careless poaching of souls—that masquerade as amour.
Yes, in a sense, the characters are stereotypes, but each is, remarkably, ingeniously, ingenuously, a masterpiece of the type. Laclos uses every pertinent word to make them real.
Yes, Les Liaisons is an ultimately degraded experience for both the characters and readers…ultimately, the reader must condemn the Marquise and the Vicomte for so many lives destroyed…death is an anticlimax in Les Liaisons Dangereuses.
The Marquise and the Vicomte are burdened with a moral framework that shuns the absolute—they have unimaginably unsatisfied desires, and no intellectual elaboration of right and wrong.
Yet, a gentle reader may offer these two a bare shred of pity.
The Marquise de Merteuil and the Vicomte de Valmont swirl through their lives, casually jousting with each other as they amuse themselves in controlling the fates of other men and women, but remaining unaware that they are not in control of their own fates.
Note for bibliophiles: Whether you read this in the original French, or in the lush translation by Ernest Dowson, accept the pain of experiencing a literary style that is no longer in vogue, prepare yourself for Laclos’ fabulous late 18th century style that discards a simple declarative sentence, readily, with apparent joy, whenever a sentence heavily laden with clauses, phrases, and modifiers will do just as well, heedless of the effect on a reader, whose inclination may be to appreciate the writhing drama of this story, with somewhat fewer words.
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2026 All rights reserved.
Book review: “Bartleby, the Scrivener”
Loneliness beyond understanding…
by Herman Melville
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many waters: more poems with 53 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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