by Richard Subber | Jan 9, 2020 | Global climate change, Human Nature, Politics, Reflections, Tidbits
actually, not an unthinkable thought…
“Owing in large measure to humankind’s
long, steadily accelerating career of habitat shattering,
the rate of extinction is currently
about a thousand times what is normal.
That’s how fast the planet’s biotic community
is losing member species these days…
I can’t get that extinction crisis out of my mind.
Extinction is not abstract in the least.
It’s the thousands of instances of the desolation
of being the last of one’s kind.”
Stephanie Mills, excerpt from “The One Who Steals the Fat,” The Sun magazine, January 2001
We’re not accustomed to thinking in truly absolute terms—think about it, extinction is the end.
Think again about your grandchildren.
Think again.
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Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2020 All rights reserved.
Book review: Shakespeare’s Wife
Germaine Greer went overboard a bit…
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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”
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by Richard Subber | Jan 6, 2020 | Book reviews, Books, Global climate change, History, Reflections, World history
It’s worth a second read…
Book review:
On the Beach
by Nevil Shute (1899-1960)
New York: Vintage International, Vintage Books, 1957
312 pages
I could not read On the Beach again without taking on some of the terminal burden of the characters. I awakened some of my disturbing memories (Weltschmerz, perhaps) of reading it the first time, almost 60 years ago.
Maybe you think you know the story line: in the aftermath of worldwide nuclear destruction, an inescapable deadly radioactive miasma is finally devastating Australia. The land down under is the last refuge of human beings on the planet.
All of them know they’re going to die in a couple months. Many of them choose to live as if they don’t know it.
The reader doesn’t need to apply much imagination. On the Beach is a baldly powerful chronicle of the unyielding imperatives of human nature, including the impulse to work side by side with someone you love, planting a garden, hoping to share a rich crop next year, ignoring the darkness in the northern sky.
Nevil Shute’s story is not out of date.
I desperately fear that my grandchildren may be re-reading this book as they survive in the hills, trying to ignore the advancing seas below.
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2020 All rights reserved.
Book review: Shantung Compound
They didn’t care much
about each other…
by Langdon Gilkey
click here
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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”
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by Richard Subber | Jan 1, 2020 | Language, Tidbits
apple breath, unforgettable…
Excerpt from “Joyas Voladoras” (“Flying Jewels”) by Brian Doyle (1956-2017)
as printed in The Sun, January 2020
“So much held in a heart in a lifetime. So much held in a heart in a day,
an hour, a moment…
You can brick up your heart as stout and tight and hard
and cold and impregnable as you possibly can
and down it comes in an instant, felled by a woman’s second glance,
a child’s apple breath, the shatter of glass in the road,
the words I have something to tell you,
a cat with a broken spine dragging itself into the forest to die,
the brush of your mother’s papery ancient hand
in the thicket of your hair,
the memory of your father’s voice early in the morning
echoing from the kitchen
where he is making pancakes for his children.”
“Joyas Voladoras” also appeared in The American Scholar, Autumn 2004; in Children and Other Wild Animals by Brian Doyle, and in One Long River of Song by Brian Doyle, 2019.
For Brian Doyle, writing was an affair of the heart.
Reading Brian Doyle’s words is pretty much the same thing.
No one can forget a child’s apple breath…
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Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2020 All rights reserved.
American Character: A History of the Epic Struggle…
Colin Woodard makes it easier to understand…(book review)
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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”
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by Richard Subber | Jun 5, 2019 | My poetry, Poetry
I knew it was you…
“Sara from South Dakota”
You’re the kid who yelled “I love the ocean!” the first time you saw it.
You’re the little kid who didn’t want to go back to the house for supper.
You’re the kind of kid who won’t stand still while Mom puts the lotion on.
You’re the kind of kid who won’t cry when the sunburn hurts.
You’re the little girl who wanted to help that baby fill up her little blue bucket.
You would NOT let your brother help you build your castles.
You’re the kid who doesn’t want to go home to South Dakota “ ‘cause it’s too far from the ocean, which is really fun.”
You’re the little kid who wasn’t afraid to ask me “What’s on the other side of the ocean?”…
and you listened to my explanation, even though it was too long,
about other countries and other people,
because you suddenly realized there are lots of places you haven’t been to,
and you’re pretty sure you want to go there, but it does seem a little scary…
You said “Thank you,” and I guessed that I had taught you something.
You’re young enough to be my granddaughter…
maybe I’ll have a granddaughter like you some day.
Later, at sundown, I saw that a child had written her name in the wet sand just below the high tide mark:
“Sara from South Dakota”
∼∼∼∼∼∼∼
with a squiggly line underneath.
I knew it was you.
You’re the kind of kid who would do it.
You’re the kind of kid who would say goodbye to the ocean.
That’s a pretty big thing for a kid to do.
September 11, 2010
I was on the Outer Banks, Avon, NC.
You can’t not see and hear kids on the beach. Some just dig in the sand, endlessly, without looking up. Some of them won’t let go of the boogie board. A few of the kids make a statement, you see, they live a little lifetime at the line that the surf just manages to reach, they face the ocean and they don’t look away…Sara was one of those kids.
My poem “Sara from South Dakota” was published in my first chapbook, Writing Rainbows: Poems for Grown-Ups. You can buy it on Amazon (paperback and Kindle), or get it free in Kindle Unlimited, search for “Richard Carl Subber”
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My poetry. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2019 All rights reserved.
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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”
“A man’s job”
a boy with his dad’s axe…
(my poem)
click here
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by Richard Subber | Apr 5, 2019 | Book reviews, Joys of reading, Language, Poetry, Reviews of other poets
no need for a treasure map…
Book review:
The Poems of Robert Frost
With an Introductory Essay “The Constant Symbol”
by Robert Lee Frost (1874-1963)
New York: The Modern Library/Random House, Inc., 1946
In his opening essay, Frost says “…poetry…is metaphor, saying one thing and meaning another, saying one thing in terms of another, the pleasure of ulteriority. Poetry is simple made of metaphor.”
My copy of The Poems of Robert Frost is a treasure ship with two old, stained green covers. I’ve been reading it for more than 50 years. It’s a bit beat up, but when I open it, it shines.
I’m not reckless enough to name “my favorite” poem—I keep changing my mind as I read through them again. Frost is a teacher. He has found so many of the right words, and he has put so many of them in the right order.
I always enjoy “The Last Word of a Bluebird (as told to a child).” The Crow carries the little Bluebird’s final message to Lesley. In his low voice he brings word about the north wind and the impending winter cold that drives the Bluebird away. The compassionate bird urges Lesley to be good, and promises that “…perhaps in the spring/He would come back and sing.”
I’m waiting for the spring, and I have a good book to help me pass the time.
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2019 All rights reserved.
Book review: The End of Greatness
Aaron David Miller comes up short…
click here
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”
* * * * * *
by Richard Subber | Feb 20, 2019 | Language, Poetry, Reviews of other poets
utterly imaginable…
Robert Frost (1874-1963) is an endlessly interesting poet. His poems are lucid, re-readable, utterly imaginable, recitable, and literate, always scaled to humanity.
A bonus for readers is that Frost sprinkled heart-stopping phrases throughout his poems, for mere poets to remark. I’m always on the lookout for words, phrases, and images that turn my head around and make me say “I wish I had written that.”
Try this one:
“Why make so much of fragmentary blue/
In here and there a bird, or butterfly…”
As you can see, one thing a noteworthy poet like Frost does is this: talk in depth and with a few choice words about the everyday things that momentarily catch one’s eye, or make a toe tap…
Right now, “fragmentary blue” is my favorite color, I can see it, I think I’ll try to write it…
Here is Frost’s complete treatise on it:
Fragmentary Blue
Why make so much of fragmentary blue
In here and there a bird, or butterfly,
Or flower, or wearing-stone, or open eye,
When heaven presents in sheets the solid hue?
Since earth is earth, perhaps, not heaven (as yet)—
Though some savants make earth include the sky;
And blue so far above us comes so high,
It only gives our wish for blue a whet.
Robert Frost’s “Fragmentary Blue” was published in 1923. It is in the public domain.
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Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2019 All rights reserved.
Book review: Shawshank Redemption
A world I do not want to know…
by Stephen King
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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