by Richard Subber | Oct 7, 2025 | Language, Reviews of other poets, Tidbits
you can make sunshine…
“…make sunshine in a shady place.”
from The Sketches of Louisa May Alcott
by Louisa May Alcott
New York: Ironweed Press, Inc., 2001
p. 250
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Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2025 All rights reserved.
Movie review: A Doll’s House
Henrik Ibsen’s classic on abuse…
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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 | Sep 25, 2025 | Reviews of other poets, Tidbits
cats are with us…
“…a sandy cat…”
Virginia Woolf said it…(quote)
no, no, not Anonymous…
“Let a man get up and say, Behold, this is the truth, and instantly I perceive a sandy cat filching a piece of fish in the background. Look, you have forgotten the cat, I say.”
Adeline Virginia Woolf (1882-1941)
I am going to try to remember, whenever I indulge in pronouncing Truth, to look for the sandy cat in the background, and to take the cat into account.
Virginia Woolf also remarked on this devastatingly probable truth:
“For most of history, Anonymous was a woman.”
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Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2025 All rights reserved.
The “dime novels” in the Civil War
Think “blood-and-thunder”…
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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 | Sep 11, 2025 | Book reviews, Books, Language, Poetry, Reviews of other poets
Check out May Sarton’s poems
Book review:
Good Poems: American Places
Garrison Keillor (b1942), ed.
New York: Viking, 2011
484 pages
Keillor is no slouch when it comes to picking readable poems, I give him full credit for that.
However, there are so many poems here that this volume isn’t selective in any meaningful way.
Good Poems: American Places has themed sections that are obviously different but the topics aren’t obviously useful.
Is there something for everyone here?
Does anyone really care?
I found a few gems: for example, poems by Tom Hennen and May Sarton.
‘Nuff said.
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2025 All rights reserved.
How does a poem end?
“Finis,” my thoughts (my poem)
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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 | Sep 4, 2025 | Book reviews, Books, Language, Poetry, Reviews of other poets
…of pears and bears…
Book review:
Traveling Light: Collected and New Poems
by David Russell Wagoner (1926-2021)
A prolific American writer, poet, novelist
It’s a pleasure to recommend Traveling Light. Wagoner has some heavy duty poetry chops.
Any serious poet can learn from his examples. Repeatedly, as I read through Traveling Light, I wanted to pick up my pen and grab a piece of paper and try my hand at writing the images he sees.
Readers, dig in! Wagoner finds the right words for those feelings, those realities that you didn’t imagine before you read his intuitions…
…such as, feeding a whole sack of fresh pears to a camel in the zoo:
“…She watched me disappear,
Then with a rippling trudge went back to her stable
To snort, to browse on hay, to remember my sack forever.
She’d been used to having no pears, but hadn’t known it…”
…such as, on meeting a bear in the bear’s own woods:
“…Withdraw without turning and start saying
Softly, monotonously, whatever comes to mind
Without special pleading:
Nothing hurt or reproachful to appeal to his better feelings.
He has none, only a harder life than yours…”
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Poetry. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2025 All rights reserved.
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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 | Aug 5, 2025 | Book reviews, Books, Reviews of other poets
joy…look for it
Book review:
Breath of Joy: Poems, Prayers, and Prose
by Danna Faulds
Breath of Joy is a heartfelt exploration of the joy that is, or can be, all around us, and in us. It may be that not everything Danna writes is inspirational for you. I was moved by many of her words.
She writes so many invitations to let joy happen—sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t, and it’s always maybe one breath away.
Take a deep breath, and try it.
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Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2025 All rights reserved.
Book review: Grace Notes
Is it prose or poetry?
by Brian Doyle
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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 | Jul 20, 2025 | Language, Poetry, Reviews of other poets
the wisdom of Rainer Maria Rilke
“Pour yourself out like a fountain…”
Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926)
Bohemian-Austrian poet
Rilke wrote with nuance. Spend some time with his poetry. A second or third experience with his lines often exposes the reader to poignantly different understandings, new intuitions, lusciously incremental meanings…
Apparently he did not intend “Pour yourself out like a fountain” to be explicit advice for poets, but I think the phrase does good duty for that purpose. Especially I like the exhortation to “pour.” I’m happy when my poems are a gushing reflection of what I feel and see.
Rilke offered more. His full statement was:
“Pour yourself out like a fountain.
Flow into the knowledge that what you are seeking
finishes often at the start, and, with ending, begins.”
That’s good for a second read. Think fountain-ish.
Source:
Rainer Maria Rilke, Part Two, XII, of The Sonnets to Orpheus, 1922
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My poetry. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2025 All rights reserved.
Book review: The Poems of Robert Frost
he hears bluebirds talking…
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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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