by Richard Subber | Jul 17, 2025 | American history, Book reviews, Books, Democracy, History, Language, Politics, Power and inequality, Reflections
“…to make lies sound truthful…”
Book review:
What Orwell Didn’t Know:
Propaganda and the New Face of American Politics
Andras Szanto, ed.
New York: Public Affairs, 2007.
236 pages.
This collection by Andras Szanto was published before the Obama presidency and what followed.
Essays by Martin Kaplan, Victor Navasky, and Geoffrey Cowan, in particular, illuminate these insightful, topical revelations about media failure to communicate truths.
George Orwell’s well-known essay, “Politics and the English Language,” is still useful and challenging, almost 75 years after he wrote it.
An excerpt from What Orwell Didn’t Know:
“…the present political chaos is connected with the decay of language…Political language…is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind…”
It is a terrifying reality that this statement sounds like it was written yesterday.
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2025 All rights reserved.
Book review: The Bartender’s Tale
Ivan Doig’s story, I mostly loved it…
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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 | Jul 12, 2025 | Language, My poetry, Poetry, Reflections
another next year…
Time traveler
Tomorrow didn’t used to be a goal.
Next week wasn’t the future
for a long time.
A year from now
didn’t always seem so far away.
For years I was
only barely interested
in my birthday,
now I see that it means
another next year
is nothing but past.
Future entices, future mystifies,
future engages
but it is not potent.
Today is the thing,
now rings the bell,
later is lonely,
it waits for a friend.
I don’t check my watch,
the chime is enough
to remind me
that minutes can be magic,
I welcome another minute,
I live my time.
April 5, 2025
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My poetry. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2025 All rights reserved.
Book review: The Snow Goose
…sensual drama, eminently poetic…
by Paul Gallico
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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 | Jul 3, 2025 | Joys of reading, Language, Tidbits
Robert was a deep thinker…
“Blue” was one of his favorite words.
He liked the feeling it made on his lips
and tongue when he said it.
Words have physical feeling, not just meaning,
he remembered thinking when he was young.
Quote from The Bridges of Madison County by Robert James Waller
New York: Warner Books Inc., 1992
171 pages
p. 8
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Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2025 All rights reserved.
“The beginning is always today.”
(quote, Mary Shelley)
so get started…
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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 | Jun 26, 2025 | Language, My poetry, Poetry, Reflections
say it again
Poetry is…
Poetry is what I see and hear and feel,
it is the life force of my sensations,
it is my potent thinking,
it is my surrender to the beauty of words
that leap together in my mind,
and spill onto my page,
and wait to pass your lips.
September 17, 2024
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My poetry. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2025 All rights reserved.
–
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 | Jun 22, 2025 | Language, My poetry, Poetry
it’s OK to stand there…
gâteau
My glance adds nothing
to the moment of this sky,
I know so well
it will not stay,
it holds my eye
for seconds more,
this sweet stack
of layered night,
this icing on the evening.
March 23, 2025
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My poetry. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2025 All rights reserved.
–
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 | Jun 3, 2025 | Language, My poetry, Poetry, Reflections
hark to the wind…
grass, singing
When you walk the fields,
you scuff the sopranos,
you tramp on the tenors,
you crush the chorus,
the grass, in its millions,
is singing its tiniest of songs.
If you stop to think on
what the field may know,
if you hark to the wind
but listen beneath it,
if you wait for
the coda
of the melody of the turf,
you may hear
scant words
and the lightest notes
and the endless tunes
of the sward.
March 4, 2025
Inspired by “Between Winter and Spring” by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer:
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My poetry. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2025 All rights reserved.
A quote from General Custer
Hint: something to do with Indians…
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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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