by Richard Subber | Jan 11, 2024 | Language, My poetry, Poetry, Reviews of other poets
the lust for words…
goût
Words can be a feast.
There is a lust for words
that dances round the page,
and waits for you,
for me,
it doesn’t hide,
it lingers for the last little word,
the glittering one
that leaps from the quill,
and fills the plate,
and waits for you,
for me,
to taste the shine…
August 26, 2023
Inspired by “When My Friend Asks Me a Difficult Question” by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, August 25, 2023, as published on her website
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My poetry. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2024 All rights reserved.
Book review: The Proud Tower
…a lot more than a history book…
by Barbara Tuchman
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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”
Your comments are welcome—tell me what you’re thinking.
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by Richard Subber | Jan 2, 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.
In other words
In a mist of morn
I see the other world
beyond my nearest trees,
the mute and misted bloom
against the hill,
it hides the far green
for moments more…
The hope of day
above the darkened mound,
a hue on the vault
that tells of dawn
in ancient signs
that I now see,
again,
I chant the joys
of my yesterdays
in this vale…
…so much of the other is so near.
October 19, 2020
Published in miller’s pond, Winter 2021
My poem “In other words” was published in my sixth collection of 73 poems, Above all: Poems of dawn and more.
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 2024 All rights reserved.
Book review: The Snow Goose
…sensual drama, eminently poetic…
by Paul Gallico
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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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Here’s what you’ll find on my website:
my poetry in free verse and 5-7-5 haiku format—nature poems, love poems, poems about grandchildren, and poems for reading aloud—written in a way that invites you to know, as precisely as possible, what’s going on in my mind and in my imagination;
thoughtful book reviews that offer an exceptional critique of the book instead of a simple book summary;
my reflections on the words, art, and wisdom of famous and not-so-famous people, and occasional comments on human nature, and
luscious examples of my love affair with words.
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by Richard Subber | Dec 28, 2023 | Language, Poetry, Reviews of other poets
Poetry alive!
As I write my kind of poetry, it happens often that a creative way is to imbue the inanimate things with human attributes, to hear the stones weeping, to believe that the owl called to me…
I find vivid elements in otherwise tolerable poems by other poets, including many whose names you and I know, and including others whose obscurity may not be fully deserved.
By chance I read “Hermes of the Ways” by Hilda “H. D.” Doolittle (1886-1961). In pre-WWI London, she joined Ezra Pound and Richard Aldington to form the original Imagist trio of poets. I am not visibly quivering to read more of her work but I offer here brief praise for her formulation, thus:
“…Apples on the small trees
Are hard,
Too small,
Too late ripened
By a desperate sun…”
Her casual introduction of an unsuccessful sun invites the reader to take a bite, nevertheless, and chew on the douleur of that big yellow thing in the sky…
“Hermes of the Ways” by Hilda Doolittle, published in Vol. 1, No. 5, of Des Imagistes, February 1914, as posted online on November 13, 2016, at Poets.org
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2023 All rights reserved.
Book review: The Jungle Grows Back:
America and Our Imperiled World
you need to read Robert Kagan’s book
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 | Dec 16, 2023 | Book reviews, Books, Joys of reading, Language
…think “Larry McMurtry”
Book review:
The View from the Cheap Seats
by Neil Gaiman (b1960)
New York: William Morrow, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers, 2016
522 pages
I realize it’s a bit outré to mention that I recently “discovered” the very satisfying writing style of Neil Gaiman.
Gaiman writes with panache about Edgar Allen Poe, Rudyard Kipling’s horror (!) stories, Dracula, and more.
I’ve read The View from the Cheap Seats and loved it!
The “Four Bookshops” piece is rare earth for me. Reading Gaiman is giving me flavor and overtones of reading Larry McMurtry (viz., Literary Life: A Second Memoir).
Gaiman recounts this anecdote:
“Albert Einstein was asked once how we could make our children intelligent. His reply was both simple and wise. ‘If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales.” (15)
Gaiman also says “There’s a brotherhood of people who read and who care about books.” (29) He’s one of those folks, and so am I.
….viz., Fahrenheit 451
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2023 All rights reserved.
“…and dipped in folly…”
only Poe knows how to say it…
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 | Dec 5, 2023 | Human Nature, Language, Reflections, Theater and play reviews
losing sight of right and wrong…
Movie review:
Dangerous Liaisons
Dangerous Liaisons (1988, rated R, 119 minutes) is not a garden of delight.
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: the Marquise de Merteuil (Glenn Close) and the Vicomte de Valmont (John Malkovich). They choose each word with careful, deliciously ribald, austerely cruel, and domineering intent.
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.
Dangerous Liaisons is an ultimately degraded experience for both the characters and viewers, who must condemn the marquise and the vicomte for so many lives destroyed…death is an anticlimax in Dangerous Liaisons.
The marquise and the vicomte are burdened with a moral framework that shuns the absolute—they have unimaginably unsatisfied desires, and no intellectual imperative of right and wrong.
They swirl through their lives, casually jousting with each other as they amuse themselves in controlling the fates of other men and women, without realizing that they are not in control of their own fates.
The movie is based on a 1782 French epistolary novel titled Les Liaisons Dangereuses by Pierre-Ambroise Choderlos de Laclos, available in English translation.
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Movie review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2023 All rights reserved.
Dirty Dancing (1987) (movie review)
Oh baby, baby, baby…
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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 | Nov 21, 2023 | Language, Tidbits
words for all seasons…
“…and a word spoken in due season,
how good is it!”
Proverbs 15:23
The Bible, King James Version
Samuel Taylor Coleridge said poetry is “the best words in the best order.”
Happily, words that are spoken in due season often are the best words.
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Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2023 All rights reserved.
A quote from General Custer
Hint: something to do with Indians…
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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