by Richard Subber | Nov 23, 2023 | Book reviews, Books, Poetry, Reviews of other poets
her words are arrows…
Book review:
Evidence
by Mary Oliver (1935-2019)
Boston: Beacon Press, 2009
74 pages
Guilty, guilty, guilty. With Evidence, Mary Oliver is guilty once again of nailing me to the floor so I can read every single poem in her book, one after the other.
Her style encourages me to think that I can write more and better poetry, because she makes it seem so easy to choose the right words, in the right order. Mary speaks straight from her heart, she uses exacting words as arrows to find precise targets in vision and imagination, and she leaves out all the other stuff.
Despite the mountain of her years, we have Evidence: Mary Oliver climbed to the highest branches. Here’s an excerpt from “About Angels and About Trees”:
“…what I know is that
they rest, sometimes,
in the tops of the trees
and you can see them,
or almost see them,
or, anyway, think: what a
wonderful idea…
The trees, anyway, are
miraculous, full of
angels…and certainly
ready to be
the resting place of
strange, winged creatures
that we, in this world, have loved.”
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2023 All rights reserved.
Above all: Poems of dawn and more with 74 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 | Sep 19, 2023 | My poetry, Other, Poetry, Reflections
no victory, but only ending…
Wonder
We’re on a strange road,
there is no straight ahead
on this strange road,
there are turnings
we have never seen,
we’re not in a race
but there is a finish line,
we’re doing it together,
one leg each in the sack,
no turning back,
no victory
but only ending,
this is a way
we’ve always imagined
but never known,
this is a strange road
and we’re learning
as we go along,
we take new steps
and wonder as we wander along…
December 18, 2021
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My poetry. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2023 All rights reserved.
Book review:
American Scripture:
Making the Declaration of Independence
…basically, this is trash talk to King George
by Pauline Maier
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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 candid comments are welcome—tell me what you’re thinking.
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by Richard Subber | Aug 26, 2023 | My poetry, Poetry, Reflections
…when “far away” means “down”
Bird brain
Her world gets bigger as she rises.
Does that robin know that she’s flying?
Does the creature know
that flight once was not foreseeable?
Does she dream a fantasy
about walking around the track?
Does she give up on the dream,
thinking “these skinny legs will never make it?”
Does avian awe intrude
in her vista when she’s airborne?
What’s it like when
“far away” means “down”?
Does she wonder what “falling” means?
Can she imagine a world
in which “flapping” and “useless”
do not have joint meaning?
Does she hide a smile
when she comforts the chick
who hesitates to make the first jump?
May 24, 2023
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My poetry. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2023 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 | Jun 17, 2023 | History, Human Nature, Reflections, Theater and play reviews
…a perfection of evil…
Movie review:
Conspiracy
The Wannsee Conference in Hitler’s Germany, January 1942
Starring Kenneth Branagh, Stanley Tucci, Colin Firth (2001)
Here’s the short version: watching Conspiracy is like drinking molten lead.
Conspiracy is an almost flawless portrayal of naked evil being done by powerful men, each of whom has lost or abandoned his moral compass.
It is dry, withering, completely transparent, all too believable—not merely because we know it’s all true. We know that there are powerful men and women alive today who are willing to do blasphemously wrong things like killing 6 million Jews.
Conspiracy dramatizes the Wannsee Conference that first officially articulated the Final Solution for the Jews of Europe: the Holocaust.
Stanley Tucci as SS Major Adolph Eichmann, Kenneth Branagh as Hitler’s Chief of Security Reinhard Heydrich, Colin Firth as Dr. Wilhelm Stuckart (a lawyer who wrote the racist Nuremberg Laws), and 12 others show how it was probably done—almost without passion—around a long conference table in a manor house outside Berlin. One of the participants failed to destroy his copy of the minutes. This surviving document was used in the post-WWII Nuremberg Trials.
Conspiracy is frightening, horrifying, and disgusting. It is a perfection of the evil that men can do.
The antidote for watching it is simple: do a good thing every day.
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Movie review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2023 All rights reserved.
Book review: The Comanche Empire
the other story of the American West…
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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 | Jan 11, 2023 | Books, Reflections, Tidbits
“The beginning is always today.”
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (1797-1851)
Today started when you woke up. Think about beginnings.
Thanks to my trusted advisor for this one.
Shelley wrote Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (1818), and by the way, if you’ve only watched the movie, you don’t know the Frankenstein story. Read the book.
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Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2023 All rights reserved.
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many waters: more poems with 53 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 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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