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 | Sep 17, 2024 | Book reviews, Books, Books Commentary, Joys of reading, Language, Reflections
“…and even make us laugh…”
“When writers make us shake our heads
with the exactness of their prose and their truths,
and even make us laugh about ourselves or life…”
Anne Lamott (b1954)
in Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life
p. 237
The “exactness” part is the hard part.
I try to make the meaning of my poems so clear that they wake up your mind.
Then you can laugh about it, shout about it…
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2024 All rights reserved.
Book review: The Poems of Robert Frost
he hears bluebirds talking…
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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 | Sep 1, 2024 | Language, 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.
ciel rouge
A bacon sky,
some heightened reds,
a cloudy froth,
the day is nigh.
May 15, 2024
sometimes color is the main clue…
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My poetry. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2024 All rights reserved.
Book review: Lafayette by Harlow Unger
He was a great man. Also rich and lucky.
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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”
Your comments are welcome—tell me what you’re thinking.
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by Richard Subber | Aug 24, 2024 | Book reviews, Books, Books Commentary, Joys of reading, Language
…a “man of letters”…
Book review:
Literary Life: A Second Memoir
by Larry McMurtry (1936-2021)
Simon & Schuster, 2009
McMurtry moves me to want more, read more…
It’s incredibly easy to read McMurtry—I’ve read Books: A Memoir, Walter Benjamin at the Dairy Queen, and now Literary Life. Time after time, it seems that he writes in an off-hand way; thoughts and scenes and chapters can end very abruptly. Yet, the work seems polished. The prose is spare, as Larry acknowledges.
I am titillated by his familiar references to so many authors and works. I would love to be a “man of letters,” as McMurtry claims to be. The draw for me is McMurtry’s immersion in books. I would be thrilled to own 200,000 books. Desperately thrilled.
I’m pretty sure that McMurtry’s passionate engagement with books and authors is a believable lifestyle. His many references to re-reading books is a believable commitment.
Since I retired nearly 20 years ago, I have, from time to time, envisioned taking the pledge to read the entire oeuvre of an author I like. Now I am moved to read McMurtry’s books. I plan to re-read Books and Literary Life to get clues about how to read them. I’ll consider reading his works in order by pub date, except for the Lonesome Dove and Berrybender tetralogies, of course.
I don’t think I’ll be disappointed.
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2024 All rights reserved.
Will the last monkey cry?
the new reality…
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 | 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 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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