by Richard Subber | Dec 25, 2025 | American history, Book reviews, Books, Joys of reading, Language
“…I feel a goneness…”
Book review:
Golden Tales of New England
May Lamberton Becker, ed.
New York: Bonanza Books, 1931
378 pages
Writers used a different kind of language to create feel-good stories in the 19th century.
Golden Tales of New England is a feel-good sample of 17 of them.
You’ll recognize some of the authors: Hawthorne, Thoreau, Louisa Alcott, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Harriet Beecher Stowe…
The others might be new for you, as they are for me, like the offering of Rose Terry Cooke (1827-1892), “A Town Mouse and a Country Mouse.” It’s an authentic, ample exhibition of New England patois and sturdy New England character. Meet “Mandy” and “M’lindy,” two aging sisters who were born Amanda and Melinda, and who were fated to share their living, mostly at a distance but, in the end, so inescapably together.
Here’s Amanda sadly recounting her sister’s death: “I guess I’ve got through…[Melinda] went an’ married that old Parker, an’ then she up and died. I wish’t I’d ha’ stayed with her longer; mabbe she wouldn’t have died. She wa’n’t old; not nigh so old as I be…I feel a goneness that I never had ketch hold o’ me before…”
Hawthorne’s “Old Esther Dudley” is a dainty adoration of a venerable lady who never gave up being a Tory during the Revolutionary War, and persisted in being the almost ghostly guardian of Province House in Boston after the British departed.
The other Golden Tales are equally exotic morsels of what entertained the citizens of the Republic long before television and Twitter.
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2025 All rights reserved.
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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 | Dec 23, 2025 | My poetry, Poetry, Reflections
the birds we do not know
knowing
I know being
and I know anticipation
and I know expectation,
and nonetheless I know surprise
and I know remembrance
and I know fear
and I know wonder…
what is it that I do not know?
what remains to be not unknown?
…which slowly singing bird
will pick my window
for her morning melodies?
September 20, 2025
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My poetry. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2025 All rights reserved.
Book review:
Moral Tribes by Joshua Greene
sincere, but off the mark…
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My first name was rain: A dreamery of poems with 52 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 16, 2025 | American history, Book reviews, Books, History, Language, Revolutionary War
what does “self-evident” mean?
Book review:
The Greatest Sentence Ever Written
by Walter Isaacson (b1952)
New York: Simon & Schuster, 2025
67 pages
First, let’s get this straight: it’s worth your time to read this little book.
Maybe you think you know all you want to know about the Declaration of Independence, but I think you’ll learn at least a couple things of interest as you read The Greatest Sentence Ever Written.
For starters, Thomas Jefferson did not “write” the Declaration. He more or less wrote the first draft, and then his committee—including Benjamin Franklin and John Adams—applied their pens, and then the Continental Congress had its final say.
Isaacson’s “greatest sentence” is the second sentence of the Declaration, beginning “We hold these truths to be self-evident…” The words of the sentence had specific meanings for educated men (no ladies in the Congress) with Enlightenment prejudices in the late 18th century, and the committee and Congress changed a number of the words in Jefferson’s draft. For example, Jefferson originally wrote “We hold these truths to be sacred and undeniable…”
Keep these “undeniable” circumstances in mind: in July 1776 no member of the Congress knew how the whole “revolution” thing would turn out, and the Declaration did not start the revolution: the shooting war had started more than a year earlier in Lexington and Concord.
Isaacson is a popular biographer, and this little book is a good example of his writing talents.
For a more in-depth treatment by a noted historian, try reading American Scripture: Making the Declaration of Independence by Pauline Maier.
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2026 All rights reserved.
Book review: Grace Notes
Is it prose or poetry?
by Brian Doyle
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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 | Dec 11, 2025 | My poetry, Poetry
smiling is important…
step by step
Write it, rhyme it,
write it down.
Write it slowly,
verb and noun.
Smile as much as will abide,
don’t allow your smile to hide.
Chase it, grab it,
cherish the elusive rhyme.
August 30, 2025
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My poetry. 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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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”
Your comments are welcome—tell me what you’re thinking.
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by Richard Subber | Dec 7, 2025 | My poetry, Poetry, Reflections
don’t try to unhear it
Hear, hear
Can you hear it?
You’re alone,
the walls don’t talk,
the plants don’t talk,
the rabbit in the yard
makes no sound,
the chair just sits there,
nature’s murmuring is too far away…
“silence” is a word
but if you say it…
Can you think a tune?
How much noise is “quiet”?
Of course,
disdain the tintinnabulation of the bells,
but listen for that small sweet note,
and hum it for a sec…
you can’t unhear it.
August 20, 2025
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My poetry. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2025 All rights reserved.
The Collected Poems of Sara Teasdale…book review
Literate, but impersonal
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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”
Your comments are welcome—tell me what you’re thinking.
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by Richard Subber | Dec 4, 2025 | American history, Book reviews, Books, History, Human Nature, Reflections
the far side of yourself…
Book review:
The Things They Carried
by Tim O’Brien (b1946)
New York: Broadway Books, 1990
273 pages
Tim O’Brien is a Vietnam war veteran.
If you served in the Vietnam war, you have a perspective for reading The Things They Carried.
If you didn’t go to Vietnam, you have a different perspective.
If you weren’t born until after the war ended, you have a different perspective.
Tim O’Brien speaks to you, read his words any way you want.
All of us are still carrying some of the things we carried in those years.
Can anyone point to feelings that haven’t changed since then?
Whether you’re a veteran or not, O’Brien invites you to get “in touch with the far side of yourself” (p. 123).
The Things They Carried is about burdens and our capacity to accept them.
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2025 All rights reserved.
Book review: To Serve Them All My Days
by R. F. Delderfield
A beloved teacher,
you know this story…
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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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