by Richard Subber | Dec 30, 2023 | My poetry, Poetry, Reflections
remember the urgent joy…
no mo’
…of course there’s no harm
to thrill in the doing of the thing,
“the last time” are tempting words
that rush too quickly to my lips,
I hear their echo
as I rush to the finish,
and only then
do I wonder
why I don’t remember
the urgent joy
of the first time,
and the rich learning
of all the other times,
and now I see
that the last time
is, of course, a rare moment,
but I want so little of it…
September 19, 2023
Cutting the grass used to be a thing.
I don’t miss it.
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My poetry. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2023 All rights reserved.
Book review: “Bartleby, the Scrivener”
Loneliness beyond understanding…
by Herman Melville
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Above all: Poems of dawn and more with 73 free verse 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 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.
Home Team: Poems About Baseball (book review)
Edwin Romond hits another homer…
Above all: Poems of dawn and more with 73 free verse 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 26, 2023 | Human Nature, My poetry, Poetry
…Becky and the baby are waiting…
A man’s job
I won’t sell my trees.
The balsams would go quickly
at “cut your own” prices,
but I tell my neighbors, again this year,
there will be no cutting
on this old slope that spills down
to my little barn.
Day is darkening,
and I move among my trees.
This one, bent and broken
in last winter’s snows,
has grown,
the birds of spring may nest
in its green spaces…
and now, from below,
the boy climbs to me, his head down,
his father’s axe in hand,
he has changed since his father died,
he tries to do a man’s work,
he will have little time
for baseball with the other boys.
“I told Momma I would find a tree,
to make a Christmas for Becky and the baby.”
So.
He holds his axe in both hands,
and he stands straight in my field.
I extend my arm.
“Go find a good one,
I can help you carry it home.”
December 1, 2018
My poem “A man’s job” was published in my third collection of 64 poems, In other words: Poems for your eyes and ears. You can buy it on Amazon (paperback and Kindle), or get it free in Kindle Unlimited, click here
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My poetry. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2023 All rights reserved.
Book review: Shakespeare’s Wife
Germaine Greer went overboard a bit…
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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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by Richard Subber | Dec 25, 2023 | My poetry, Poetry
wrapping in the dark hours…
Santa’s helpers
Bows and ribbons all around,
we’re on the floor
wrapping in the dark hours,
and we unwrap our hearts
and share great gifts,
again and again.
December 25, 2022
Inspired by “Every Christmas Eve” by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, December 25, 2022, on her website, www.ahundredfallingveils.com
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My poetry. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2024 All rights reserved.
Book review: Tales from Shakespeare
summaries by Charles and Mary Lamb…
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Above all: Poems of dawn and more with 73 free verse 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 19, 2023 | My poetry, Poetry, Reflections
I’m waiting…
Upon a time
For now time is my world.
My world of things exists in time,
my world of places gives the things a spot,
allotted time gives up
the passing lifetime things renew,
to keep a place
in pace with me.
I know not how to stop nor when nor where,
nor do I care to know.
I conjure places, hold a thing,
and snatch the time for it to be.
They all belong to me when I’m alone.
But soon each place
will bear your stance and mine,
we’ll share our hoarded time.
We’ve cached secure in clouds a thing called love
and, then, two smiles will burn the clouds away.
November 18, 1967
Bethlehem, PA
For my dearest one
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My poetry. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2023 All rights reserved.
Book review: Ethan Frome
not being satisfied with less…
by Edith Wharton
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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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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 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…
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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