by Richard Subber | Feb 20, 2023 | Human Nature, Tidbits
wanderer…
“I am the highway
and a peregrine
and all the sails that ever went to sea.”
Prodigious words by Robert Kincaid, in The Bridges of Madison County (by Robert Waller, 1995, p. 153)
Francesca Johnson confessed that she was “overwhelmed by his sheer emotional and physical power,” and those words were his response.
A peregrine is a falcon, of course, and it also means foreigner, alien, rover, wanderer, migrant, stranger…
…but love is not a stranger in The Bridges of Madison County.
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Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2023 All rights reserved.
Book review: The Scarlet Letter
the beating hearts…by Nathaniel Hawthorne
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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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by Richard Subber | Feb 19, 2023 | Human Nature, My poetry, Poetry
giving is all…
Santa’s helpers
Bows and ribbons all around,
we’re on the floor
wrapping in the dark hours,
and we unwrap our hearts
and share great gifts,
again and again.
December 25, 2022
Delightfully inspired by “Every Christmas Eve” by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, December 25, 2022, on her website, www.ahundredfallingveils.com
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My poetry. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2023 All rights reserved.
Book review: “Bartleby, the Scrivener”
Think about loneliness beyond understanding…
by Herman Melville
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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 | Feb 5, 2023 | Book reviews, Books, Human Nature, Power and inequality
it’s not about rational choices…
Book review:
What’s Wrong with Economics?
A Primer for the Perplexed
by Robert Jacob Alexander, Baron Skidelsky (b1939)
New Haven, CT: Yales University Press, 2020
223 pages
Skidelsky has written a powerfully convergent book about the origins and enduring nature of economics and the lamentably over-hyped concept of Homo economicus.
“Economic Man”—the human calculating machine that continuously, exclusively acts in the most rational way to achieve maximum value at minimum cost—exists only in the imaginations of economists who invented him to fit their equally fictitious models of human behavior and modern economic activity.
In a nutshell: “…the neoclassical model of rational behaviour based on fixed preferences, complete contracts, and ample relevant information is the wrong one.” (p. 90)
What’s Wrong with Economics? will help you understand what’s wrong with our current so-called capitalist system and the people, companies, and governments that it mostly benefits.
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2023 All rights reserved.
The Reader (Der Vorleser)
Not just a rehash of WWII…
by Bernhard Schlink
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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 | Jan 18, 2023 | Book reviews, Books, Human Nature, Joys of reading
love and trust and good will…
Book review:
Silas Marner
by Mary Ann Evans “George Eliot” (1819-1880)
English novelist, an icon in Victorian literature
New York: The Macmillan Company, 1899, repr. 1932
348 pages
Silas Marner is, ultimately, a story of love and trust and good will in a world that tolerates all of the manifestations of the human spirit, both good and ill.
The story invites you to pay attention to the good guys.
Evans (Eliot) offers some of her insights regarding “people whose lives have been made various by learning.” (p. 24)
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2023 All rights reserved.
The “dime novels” in the Civil War
Think “blood-and-thunder”…
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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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by Richard Subber | Jan 6, 2023 | Book reviews, Books, Human Nature
television is entertainment at its worst
Book review:
Amusing Ourselves to Death:
Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business
by Neil Postman (1931-2003)
New York: Elisabeth Sifton Books/Viking, 1985
184 pages
This is a rare treasure—a can’t-put-it-down kind of book.
I wish I’d read it 35 years ago.
Amusing Ourselves to Death is a 184-page drumbeat of insight and reality about the devastating impact of television on our culture and our prospects of living the good life.
Postman, a media theorist and cultural critic, says television “is a medium which presents information in a form that renders it simplistic, nonsubstantive, nonhistorical and noncontextual; that is to say, information packaged as entertainment.” (p. 141)
He wrote the book before the internet got really started, and before the enhanced horrors of social media like Facebook and Twitter and TikTok.
He continued to write about the failures of our educational enterprises and the negative impacts of technology on our culture.
Don’t let Amusing Ourselves to Death be the only Postman book you read in the near future.
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2023 All rights reserved.
Book review:
The American Revolution: A History
The “Founders” were afraid
of “democracy”…
by Gordon S. Wood
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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 | Dec 25, 2022 | Human Nature, My poetry, Poetry, Reflections
doing the right thing is easy…
A man’s job
I won’t sell my trees.
The balsams would go quickly
at “cut your own” prices,
but I tell my neighbors, again this year,
there will be no cutting
on this old slope that spills down
to my little barn.
Day is darkening,
and I move among my trees.
This one, bent and broken
in last winter’s snows,
has grown,
the birds of spring may nest
in its green spaces…
and now, from below,
the boy climbs to me, his head down,
his father’s axe in hand,
he has changed since his father died,
he tries to do a man’s work,
he will have little time
for baseball with the other boys.
“I told Momma I would find a tree,
to make a Christmas for Becky and the baby.”
So.
He holds his axe in both hands,
and he stands straight in my field.
I extend my arm.
“Go find a good one,
I can help you carry it home.”
December 1, 2018
My poem “A man’s job” was published in my third collection of 64 poems, In other words: Poems for your eyes and ears. You can buy it on Amazon (paperback and Kindle), or get it free in Kindle Unlimited, click here
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Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2022 All rights reserved.
“…and dipped in folly…”
only Poe knows how to say it…
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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”
Your comments are welcome—tell me what you’re thinking.
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