by Richard Subber | Sep 14, 2025 | My poetry, Poetry, Tidbits
the crumbs beckon…
not just cookies…
Don’t reach for the last one,
not yet,
let the full taste linger,
let the crunch
become a munch,
let the crumbs beckon,
lick your fingers
one last time,
then go ahead.
Do it.
Eat the last macaroon.
Say “thank you!”
right out loud,
let everyone hear it!
May 25, 2025
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My poetry. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2025 All rights reserved.
Book review: An Empire on the Edge
by Nick Bunker
The British wanted to win
the Revolutionary War,
but they had good reasons
for not trying too hard…
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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 | Sep 11, 2025 | Book reviews, Books, Language, Poetry, Reviews of other poets
Check out May Sarton’s poems
Book review:
Good Poems: American Places
Garrison Keillor (b1942), ed.
New York: Viking, 2011
484 pages
Keillor is no slouch when it comes to picking readable poems, I give him full credit for that.
However, there are so many poems here that this volume isn’t selective in any meaningful way.
Good Poems: American Places has themed sections that are obviously different but the topics aren’t obviously useful.
Is there something for everyone here?
Does anyone really care?
I found a few gems: for example, poems by Tom Hennen and May Sarton.
‘Nuff said.
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2025 All rights reserved.
How does a poem end?
“Finis,” my thoughts (my poem)
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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 | Sep 6, 2025 | My poetry, Poetry, Reflections
children show the way…
View
Darkness begs for light.
The shaded bower does not fight
the sun’s traverse,
the first bright ray
that heralds day…
The night embraces all its dark,
at dusk the light well knows
to fade,
faint stars are meagre,
creatures huddle
to protect their own,
endings seem to come to fore,
but dawn begins
to make its way…
Great shadows linger
in the barn’s high reach,
the hay is mounded,
making dark spaces
where no one goes,
making the hiding spots
that no one knows,
and yet the children
climb old ladders,
and flounce the hay and shout
and guard their lantern
in the shadows,
and heed the lure of dark,
and make some day
as they make their lark…
May 29, 2025
inspired by “…to make sunshine in a shady place.” from The Sketches of Louisa May Alcott, by Louisa May Alcott, New York: Ironweed Press, Inc., 2001, 282 pages, p. 250
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My poetry. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2025 All rights reserved.
–
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 | Sep 4, 2025 | Book reviews, Books, Language, Poetry, Reviews of other poets
…of pears and bears…
Book review:
Traveling Light: Collected and New Poems
by David Russell Wagoner (1926-2021)
A prolific American writer, poet, novelist
It’s a pleasure to recommend Traveling Light. Wagoner has some heavy duty poetry chops.
Any serious poet can learn from his examples. Repeatedly, as I read through Traveling Light, I wanted to pick up my pen and grab a piece of paper and try my hand at writing the images he sees.
Readers, dig in! Wagoner finds the right words for those feelings, those realities that you didn’t imagine before you read his intuitions…
…such as, feeding a whole sack of fresh pears to a camel in the zoo:
“…She watched me disappear,
Then with a rippling trudge went back to her stable
To snort, to browse on hay, to remember my sack forever.
She’d been used to having no pears, but hadn’t known it…”
…such as, on meeting a bear in the bear’s own woods:
“…Withdraw without turning and start saying
Softly, monotonously, whatever comes to mind
Without special pleading:
Nothing hurt or reproachful to appeal to his better feelings.
He has none, only a harder life than yours…”
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Poetry. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2025 All rights reserved.
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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 31, 2025 | Book reviews, Books, Human Nature, Joys of reading, Language
prime times of life…
Book review:
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
by Muriel Spark (1918-2006)
New York: Harper Perennial, 1961, 1994
187 pages
Miss Jean Brodie, an exceedingly unconventional teacher, described every part of her life and her commitments and her outlook as being “in my prime,” but it is a hallmark of Muriel Spark’s magnificent talent in assembling the best words that it is left to the reader to completely imagine what “prime” may mean.
The defining value of the novel is the unceasing willingness and undaunted desire of Brodie’s carefully chosen students—the girls in the “Brodie set”—to try to figure out what “prime” means and to try to understand the effects their teacher is having on them.
The pages are filled with interactions and misunderstandings and hormonal energies. Miss Brodie and the other grownups dramatically pursue their teaching roles, but the girls largely find their own ways to learn things and work at growing up while doing so.
The book ends but the story doesn’t end. Henry Adams said a teacher can never tell “where (her) influence stops.” The ultimately humiliated Miss Brodie dies, but her prime has no boundaries and her students make their own lives.
p.s. the acclaimed movie with the same name and Maggie Smith as Miss Brodie is first class entertainment, but it mostly ignores Muriel Spark’s grimly realistic portrayal of the life forces that animate the “Brodie set.”
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My poetry. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2025 All rights reserved.
Book review: The Proud Tower
…a lot more than a history book…
by Barbara Tuchman
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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, 2025 | My poetry, Poetry, Reflections, Tidbits
you know what to do…
point and squeeze
Shoot me if I start watching TV again.
I don’t want to be
like the old lady in the wheelchair
who turns, with some visible pain,
to gaze at the TV screen as she’s pushed past it.
I don’t want to be
like the old guy in the fitness room
who sits on his exercise chair
and looks up, fixated with mouth agape,
at the TV screen that won’t stop talking.
I don’t want to be
like the people in the waiting room
who can’t stop looking
at the TV screen
with the sound turned down.
Keep an eye on me—you know what to do.
May 14, 2025
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My poetry. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2025 All rights reserved.
The Scarlet Letter, victim of Hollywood
Nathaniel Hawthorne’s version is best
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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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