by Richard Subber | Oct 31, 2023 | Book reviews, Books, Joys of reading, Language
sassy, salty, and singular
Book review:
The Kingdom of the Kid:
Growing Up In The Long-Lost Hamptons
by Geoff Gehman (b1958)
State University of New York Press, Albany, NY 2013
238 pages
I stepped outside my comfort zone to read Geoff Gehman’s memoir about some of his childhood years in the “long-lost Hamptons.” I’m glad I did.
If you have a particular point of view about memoirs, either for or against, try to forget it and pick up The Kingdom of the Kid, and just settle in for the ride.
This is more than a prosaic romp through childhood memories, it is a paean celebrating a child’s-eye-view of life.
Gehman is a writer who likes to “linger over words,” that’s my kind of writer. His prose, his stories, his memories…sassy, salty and singular.
Gehman is a poet, too. Repeatedly, he offers lush insight into his industrious youth, his friendships with the young and the old, his affinity for the place, the “long-lost Hamptons” where Geoff and his pals spent the good old days.
He describes the scene as he observed mourners in the Wainscott Cemetery:
“…I sat on my bike in the school parking lot, shaded by grand sycamores, and watched visitors treat the cemetery with reverence. They placed flowers by graves, prayed on their knees, cried on their backs. They stared at the sky, held séances in broad daylight, eavesdropped on eternity.
“Those pilgrims taught me the morality of mortality. Without asking anyone I learned to walk around the stones, to respect the dead as if they were alive.”
In every chapter he offers another little piece of his heart.
The Kingdom of the Kid is good reading. Real good.
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2023 All rights reserved.
Book review: The Bridges of Madison County
If you’re looking for
highly stoked eroticism
and high-rolling lives
that throw off sparks when they touch,
look elsewhere.
by Robert Waller
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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 | Aug 26, 2022 | Language, My poetry, Poetry
…makes the fairy filigrees…
The water way
The vaulted glen preserves the cold calm,
enwraps the stillness,
enfolds the shrouded bowers,
hushes the tiny creatures
that do not sleep,
and graces the febrile stream
that ice cannot subdue,
the frosted flowing stream
that falls from freckled rock
to ledge to pool,
and foams awhile,
and pauses, turns,
and makes the fairy filigrees
that hang in air,
and finds its familiar course
in channels that defy
the glaze of winter.
September 7, 2019
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My poetry. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2022 All rights reserved.
Book review: Shawshank Redemption
This is a world I do not want to know…
by Stephen King
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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”
Your comments are welcome—tell me what you’re thinking.
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by Richard Subber | Jan 5, 2022 | Joys of reading, Language
I won’t show you mine…
You can learn something from Kurt Vonnegut Jr. (1922-2007)
Now, Vonnegut isn’t my favorite writer. Yes, of course, I’ve read Slaughterhouse-Five. OK, that puts me in the “I’ve read Slaughterhouse-Five” category. To paraphrase Woody Allen, the novel has to do with World War II and stuff…
OK, sorry about that downer intro. I don’t incline to sound like a Vonnegut fan when I say that the following anecdote is a glorious insight that moves me.
In 2006, shortly before his death, Vonnegut gave some advice to five New York City high school guys who had written to him:
“. . . Here’s an assignment for tonight,
and I hope Ms. Lockwood will flunk you if you don’t do it:
Write a six line poem, about anything, but rhymed . . .
Make it as good as you possibly can.
But don’t tell anybody what you’re doing.
Don’t show it or recite it to anybody,
not even your girlfriend or parents or whatever, or Ms. Lockwood. OK?
Tear it up into teeny-weeny pieces, and discard them . . .
You will find that you have already been
gloriously rewarded for your poem.
You have experienced becoming,
learned a lot more about what’s inside you,
and you have made your soul grow.”
Oh yes, I’m writing my poem now.
Don’t show me yours.
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Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2022 All rights reserved.
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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”
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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
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 | Jun 25, 2020 | Book reviews, Books, Joys of reading, Language
…relentlessly realistic dialogue…
(book review)
A Farewell to Arms
Ernest Miller Hemingway (1899-1961)
New York: The Modern Library, 1932.
It’s been a while since I read Hemingway.
A Farewell to Arms is a slow starter, and again I learned to pace myself without too much trouble. The action is restrained but steady, and again I realized gradually that a key element is the relentlessly realistic dialogue.
The American protagonist, Frederick Henry, is involved in every scene. The life of the book is his life. His recurring, desultory involvement in his own life and his role in the Italian Army during World War I is the backdrop of his elaborately recounted relationship with the nurse, Catherine Barkley.
A Farewell to Arms doesn’t really seem to be a war novel. On the other hand, except for brief interludes, the characters really don’t seem to be at peace. For Frederick Henry, it’s an ironic farewell.
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2020 All rights reserved.
Book review: Seven Gothic Tales
by Isak Dinesen
her lush and memorable stories…
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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 | Apr 5, 2019 | Book reviews, Joys of reading, Language, Poetry, Reviews of other poets
no need for a treasure map…
Book review:
The Poems of Robert Frost
With an Introductory Essay “The Constant Symbol”
by Robert Lee Frost (1874-1963)
New York: The Modern Library/Random House, Inc., 1946
In his opening essay, Frost says “…poetry…is metaphor, saying one thing and meaning another, saying one thing in terms of another, the pleasure of ulteriority. Poetry is simply made of metaphor.”
My copy of The Poems of Robert Frost is a treasure ship with two old stained green covers. I’ve been reading it for more than 50 years. It’s a bit beat up, but when I open it, it shines.
I’m not reckless enough to name “my favorite” poem—I keep changing my mind as I read through them again. Frost is a teacher. He has found so many of the right words, and he has put so many of them in the right order.
I always enjoy “The Last Word of a Bluebird (as told to a child).” The Crow carries the little Bluebird’s final message to Lesley. In his low voice he brings word about the north wind and the impending winter cold that drives the Bluebird away. The compassionate bird urges Lesley to be good, and promises that “…perhaps in the spring/He would come back and sing.”
I’m waiting for the spring time, and I have a good book to help me pass the time.
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2019 All rights reserved.
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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