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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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 | May 19, 2018 | Book reviews, Books, Poetry, Reviews of other poets
A bit too much
of stars, love, and flowers…
Book review:
Collected Poems of Sara Teasdale
by Sara Teasdale
New York: The Macmillan Company 1937 (repr. 1966)
224 pages
A modest sampling of Sara Teasdale’s oeuvre goes a long way.
Her poems are sincere, artfully crafted, with genuine passion. If you don’t mind the almost imperative rhyming, so much the better. If you can’t get enough of the dawn, and the starry sky, love ( winning it and losing it), flowers, and Mother Nature, you’ll keep picking up Collected Poems of Sara Teasdale, time after time.
I had to draw the line, on page 74, when I got to “Leaves.” I was bone dry by the time I read:
“One by one, like leaves from a tree,
All my faiths have forsaken me…”
Sara Teasdale (1884-1933) was a lyric poet whose poetry collections were bestsellers during her lifetime. Be that as it may…
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2018 All rights reserved.
Book review:
John Eliot:
The Man Who Loved The Indians
Entertaining, convenient biography
by Carleton Beals
click here
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 | Mar 1, 2018 | Books, Poetry, Reviews of other poets
brains falling out,
and stuff…
Book review:
Poetry as Insurgent Art
by Lawrence Monsanto Ferlinghetti (1919-2021)
American poet, painter, Socialist activist
I’m ignoring the Socialist activist thing in Ferlinghetti’s past. It’s really old news and it’s dull news—socialism isn’t and never was a clear and present danger in America, because the debilitating capitalist mentality and reality is entrenched.
Moving on to Ferlinghetti’s poetry: I confess I haven’t read a lot of it. I tried his Poetry as Insurgent Art (2007) and it didn’t leave me panting for more.
Much of Insurgent Art is a collection of one-liners, like “If you have nothing to say, don’t say it” and “Come out of your closet. It’s dark in there.”
Forsooth.
My takeaway from Poetry as Insurgent Art is that Ferlinghetti was in love with his own careless spontaneity.
I certainly acknowledge that some readers may view this work as the outpouring of a driven great spirit. Different strokes…
I think it is the slough of a generous but disconnected artist’s talent with words.
Ferlinghetti said “Don’t be so open-minded that your brains fall out.” Them’s words to live by, I guess…
Here’s my advice to folks who want to imitate M. Ferlinghetti:
Don’t be so open-minded that there’s nothing you won’t write.
Poetry as Insurgent Art is much too ordinary to be insurgent.
Take it from Walt Whitman,
you need a bit of “barbaric yawp” to do insurgent poetry.
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2018 All rights reserved.
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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Book review: “Bartleby, the Scrivener”
Loneliness beyond understanding…
by Herman Melville
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