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 15, 2025 | Human Nature, Reflections
many ways to cherish butterflies…
“…but on paper, things can live forever.
On paper, a butterfly never dies.”
Jacqueline Woodson (b1963)
Writes books for youth
…kids draw pictures
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Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2025 All rights reserved.
Book review: Shawshank Redemption
A world I do not want to know…
by Stephen King
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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 | 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 8, 2025 | My poetry, Poetry
close to myself…
Dreamery #3
I think I knew
what I was doing,
but I wasn’t sure why.
I was close to myself,
I did not heed the whirr
of my big blower,
knew it would be a long job,
sensed an annoying
lack of progress,
the work was my duty,
a slow drudgery,
I did not think of ending,
there was a clear space,
I was not curious,
I stepped in it,
I didn’t know
where the leaves would go,
the far wall of that big hall
was beyond the edge
of the half-dark,
there was no thought of outside,
so many leaves,
no noise…
I woke before the work was done.
March 30, 2025
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My poetry. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2025 All rights reserved.
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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 | 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 | Jul 1, 2025 | My poetry, Poetry
The Book of Days
The dawn’s early light can be pleasure enough for the whole day.
There are words enough to tell the story of “the temptation of day to come.”
It is my delight to write some of them for your delectation.
Gray
A nothing sky,
a tasseled waste of cloud,
a pale so drear,
a tease of dawn.
August 28, 2024
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My poetry. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2025 All rights reserved.
Home Team: Poems About Baseball (book review)
Edwin Romond hits another homer…
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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”
Your comments are welcome—tell me what you’re thinking.
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