by Richard Subber | Nov 30, 2022 | Book reviews, Books, Language, Poetry, Reviews of other poets
good story telling…
Book review:
The Complete Poems of Sarah Orne Jewett
by Sarah Orne Jewett (1849-1909)
New York: Ironweed Press, 1999
85 pages
It is a solid, pleasant experience to read the poems of Sarah Orne Jewett.
Mostly her imagery in The Complete Poems is not exalted, and mostly her insights are not life-changing, but she is a compelling story teller and she invites the reader to see what she sees.
That’s good.
Some excerpts:
“And so, across the empty miles
Light from my star shines. Is it, dear,
Your love has never gone away?
I said farewell and—kept you here”
From “Together”
———————————————-
“The nearest daisies looked at me
Because they heard me call;
And they told each other what I had said,
Though they did not hear it all.
And I stood there wishing for you,
All alone on the hill;
While far below were the fields asleep,
And above, the sky so still.”
From “A Night in June”
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“I saw the worn rope idle hang
Beside me in the belfry brown.
I gave the bell a solemn toll—
I rang the knell for Gosport town.”
From “On Star Island”
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2022 All rights reserved.
A glimpse of the millennial dawn…
witness to the song of the sea…
a nature poem
“Chanson de mer”
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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 | Mar 30, 2021 | Book reviews, Books, Joys of reading, Language, Poetry, Reviews of other poets
even baseball in the dark…
Home Team: Poems About Baseball
by Edwin Romond
West Hartford, CT: Grayson Books, 2018
You really don’t have to be a baseball fan to feel the joy that just won’t quit in Romond’s offering of romantic poems about baseball.
I mean romantic in the sense of the 19th century Romantic Era, when practitioners in most of the arts were focused on the many dimensions of intense emotion and esthetic experience.
You will discover that Romond’s poetry has so much of longing, and recognition, and acceptance, and the joys we can find in everyday life, and Home Team has many versions of all that.
My favorite is “Baseball in the Dark,” a ripe recollection of a young boy’s dream that he could again hear radio broadcaster Mel Allen’s “summer voice going, going, on and on…telling me baseball in the dark.” That would be a downright good thing to do, and Romond knows a lot of those things.
You can check out Romond’s poetry books on his website, click here.
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2021 All rights reserved.
The poetic art of Grace Butcher
Poetry for reading out loud…
it’s that good
Book review: Child, House, World
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”
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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”
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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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by Richard Subber | Jan 20, 2019 | Poetry, Reviews of other poets, Tidbits
A poet all her life, of her life…
Mary Jane Oliver (1935-2019)
R. I. P.
American poet extraordinaire…
…she kept looking for the right words
Mary Oliver shared so much of her being, in compelling, provocatively calming ways.
Mary Oliver invited me to understand the goodness of sitting quietly at the edge of a pond, seeing and hearing its life, feeling connected to our world.
Mary Oliver made much of her “one wild and precious life.”
Mary Jane Oliver, requiescat in pace.
[Selection is from Mary Oliver’s “The Summer Day”]
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Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2019 All rights reserved.
Old Friends (book review)
Tracy Kidder tells truth about old age…
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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 | Dec 30, 2018 | Book reviews, Books, Poetry, Reviews of other poets
clunky is the word…
Book review:
The Cradle Place
by Thomas Lux (1946-2017)
New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2004
61 pages
Some folks think Thomas Lux deserves to be a prize winner.
Not likely. He offers joyfully erratic, uncivil, and unimaginable poems.
Lux inclines to clunky excess in his descriptions. No spirits are born in The Cradle Place.
Although the jacket notes refer to “refreshing iconoclasms,” I couldn’t find any.
Mary Oliver doesn’t have to move over…
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2018 All rights reserved.
Thieves in the Night
A story of Israel…(book review)
by Arthur Koestler
click here
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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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