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
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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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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 | 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
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My poetry. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2024 All rights reserved.
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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 | 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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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”
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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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