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.
* * * * * *
Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2024 All rights reserved.
A poem about the right thing
…and the lesser incarnation…
“Vanity”
–
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”
* * * * * *
by Richard Subber | Jun 15, 2024 | Language, My poetry, Poetry
a better way to say…
In search of…
I wish I had a better way to say
the things I really want to hear today.
Alas, I don’t, and there’s the rub, you see?
The words I want won’t blossom here for me.
April 6, 2015
Sayin’ it the iambic pentameter way…
* * * * * *
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…
–
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.
* * * * * *
by Richard Subber | Jun 13, 2024 | Book reviews, Books, Language, Poetry, Reviews of other poets
dry tears, is all…
Book review:
All of Us: The Collected Poems
by Raymond Carver (1938-1988)
American poet, short story writer
386 pages
Repeat after me: à chacun son goût.
This is my first experience with Carver’s poetry.
I’ll say this right out: I do not disdain Carver’s poems, neither do I feel any urge to read them again.
He didn’t bother with the lyric voice. Don’t look for any sparks. Occasionally, one will feel moved to dry tears.
Carver offers a monochrome oeuvre. It’s prose in disguise. In some dusty corners Carver is included in the loosely defined group of poets who write so-called “dirty realism.” Think Bukowski (but Carver isn’t as strident as Bukowski, not nearly as imperious as Bukowski).
Carver’s poetic efforts are better than dirt, but what he writes really isn’t poetry in any flavor that appeals to me.
…à chacun son goût
* * * * * *
Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2024 All rights reserved.
Book review: Shakespeare’s Wife
Germaine Greer went overboard a bit…
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”
* * * * * *
by Richard Subber | Jun 11, 2024 | Language, My poetry, Poetry
yesterday’s trail…
woodward
The mystic mess
of leaves and twigs
and fractured stones,
no trace of steps,
the trees lean in
to shade
the vestige of a path,
there is the jumble
of shapes no one has touched,
the water of each season
knows its way,
the damp persists
in darkened earth,
scant colors fleck
the sombre tints,
a jewel of nature’s wont…
February 16, 2024
A view from the Woodland Crossing-Oakleaf link at Linden Ponds, Hingham, MA
* * * * * *
My poetry. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2024 All rights reserved.
Book review: Seven Gothic Tales
by Isak Dinesen,
lush and memorable stories…
–
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.
* * * * * *
by Richard Subber | May 30, 2024 | Language, My poetry, Poetry
that toe is tapping…
touch the music
The horn is a sweet river
of hot icing,
sprites chase the notes,
toe tapping just happens,
the sax galumphs
and then it’s power and pout
and plaintive moan
and tickled scales,
a raft of rhythms that pushes through
to almost endings,
the growly sax can make a joy
to bounce inside our ears,
all dulcet, warm, and lazy…
January 26, 2024
easy listening in the Fireside lounge on a Friday afternoon
* * * * * *
My poetry. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2024 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.
* * * * * *
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.
* * * * * *
Movie review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2023 All rights reserved.
–
My first name was rain: A dreamery of poems with 52 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”
* * * * * *
