by Richard Subber | May 28, 2024 | Book reviews, Books, Joys of reading, Language, Tidbits
“…turn the unspeakable into words…”
Book review:
Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life
by Anne Lamott
New York: Anchor Books, Doubleday, 1994
239 pages
I prefer to think of Anne Lamott’s free-spirited commentary on writing as “some encouragement” and “some guidance.”
If you want to be a writer and don’t have a clue about how or why you want it, I guess that reading Bird by Bird may be entertaining but I think probably it won’t give you the mojo.
Lamott is talking to fellow writers when she’s probing the yin and the yang of the whole messy, oh so personal business of committing the right words to paper. Her tidbits about life will be mostly familiar to just about anybody, and sometimes they seem like they originated in post-it notes on her fabulous collection of index cards that she uses to jot down those special words and insights and dream talking.
Bird by Bird seems to be an appealing excuse to feel good about the tribulations and the ecstasies of writing, and all the stuff that happens in between. It’s a gossipy, comfortable walk through Lamott’s life of writing. She mentions this: “John Gardner wrote that the writer is creating a dream into which he or she invites the reader, and that the dream must be vivid and continuous.”
Her passion for writing is mostly obvious, and motivational if you’re inclined to be motivated.
I think this line is as good a summary as the reader can hope for: “…the writer’s job is to see what’s behind [the closed door], to see the bleak unspeakable stuff, and to turn the unspeakable into words—not just into any words but if we can, into rhythm and blues.”
Did you hear the drum riff?
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2024 All rights reserved.
“…and dipped in folly…”
only Poe knows how to say it…
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 | Apr 9, 2024 | Joys of reading, Language, My poetry, Poetry
the soprano’s tear-stained kyrie
Symphony
A new book
somehow sings a siren’s song,
a symphony of words
that make a new tune,
such delight to open any page,
and hear the mezzo’s lilt,
the soprano’s tear-stained kyrie,
and nod as the basso
closes a chapter
with words worth repeating,
and let the chorus turn you
to another page,
for more words
that suddenly are not strangers,
such old words
that make a new song.
May 30, 2023
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My poetry. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2024 All rights reserved.
“Boil up” and other good manners…
The “Hobo Ethical Code” is worth a quick read.
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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 | Mar 19, 2024 | Language, My poetry, Poetry, Reflections
behind the frosted mist…
Revelation
Beyond my domain, I leaned ahead
to cross the slope
under a brazen sky.
In the chill of dawn, I stopped.
The apparition…
A bull appeared.
He turned his horns to me,
showed no fear,
no gaze of knowing,
no sentient nod,
he stepped away…
Another creature shambled near,
regarded me with innocence,
and scarcely paused,
his brawny flank rippling slowly
as he passed on…
I stretched my eye
to the scant egress
of these beasts with iron mien.
Indeed, I had not crossed the path
of a rambling herd.
I chanced to find
the portal of an ancient furnace of the gods,
who took such wild ores as they desired,
and stoked their smokeless fires
behind the frosted mist,
and conjured life,
and smelted the great brutes—
cold-forged in the chill of dawn—
who stepped heavily across my path
and did not mistake me
for their kind.
January 7, 2020
Inspired by this quotation:
“I had seen a herd of buffalo, 129 of them, come out of the morning mist under a copper sky, one by one, as if the dark and massive, iron-like animals with the mighty horizontally swung horns were not approaching but were being created before my eyes and sent out as they were finished.”
by Isak Dinesen
in Out of Africa (1938)
My poem “Revelation” 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”
“Revelation” also was published in my fifth collection of 53 poems, My first name was rain: A dreamery of 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 2024 All rights reserved.
Book review: Seven Gothic Tales
by Isak Dinesen,
lush and memorable stories…
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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”
Your comments are welcome—tell me what you’re thinking.
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by Richard Subber | Mar 12, 2024 | Human Nature, Language, My poetry, Poetry
Dear, dear sprite…
and more…
Her lightest step is all she needs
to round the garden in her tour,
she makes no stand,
and fills the air with cherub chatter,
she makes scant imprint in the earth…
The elfin miss delights in play,
so wild, winsome,
willing to sing
what happiness she feels,
we little know its measure
nor the nature of her laugh, her smile,
the chirp of her siren sound.
Dear, dear sprite, she hops and bounces,
we scarcely reck the eldritch stuff,
what seems of perverse end
does not sustain a care
beyond the moment’s wisp of dread
that’s clapped away in her dance.
Her lightest step is all she needs
to round the garden in her tour,
she makes no stand,
she flutters, frisks in merriment,
and makes her joy…
June 12, 2022
Inspired by the child, Pearl, in The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne.
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My poetry. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2024 All rights reserved.
How does a poem end?
“Finis,” my thoughts (my poem)
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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 | Mar 9, 2024 | Book reviews, Books, Human Nature, Joys of reading, Language
the good old way…
Book review:
Scaramouche
Rafael Sabatini (1875-1950)
New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1921
392 pages
These people talk to each other. It’s face-to-face communications. They pay attention to body language and what you do with your face.
Scaramouche ends the way you think it’s going to end: boy gets girl.
But there’s a lot of road to travel before we get to that ending—I think there’s only one reference to a heaving bosom—there is fastidious bad language, and lots of casual use of Latin—there’s a lot of hand kissing, which is something we could do more of these days.
Sabatini was a prolific writer and he wrote this romance novel the way it should be written. The reader gets an eyeful and an earful and a heartful of genuine romance, with all the words that make it work.
It’s still possible to make love in the good old way they did it in the 18th century. Read all about it.
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2024 All rights reserved.
The Scarlet Letter, victim of Hollywood
Nathaniel Hawthorne’s version is best
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 | Feb 24, 2024 | Language, My poetry, Poetry
take another look…
Purely
The fallen snow lifts my eyes
as high as everything,
it cloaks all, this gentle tableau,
so white, so grey,
so mottled white in the mix
of so many of the plainest colors,
so many hints of vagrant hues,
so quiet,
such stillness,
such cold,
such wonted white,
all, all…
December 11, 2019
It was all just there, free for the looking…
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My poetry. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2024 All rights reserved.
Book review: A Pirate Looks at Fifty
Jimmy Buffett,
hijinksed,
slobbering,
the whole deal…
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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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