by Richard Subber | Mar 12, 2024 | Human Nature, Language, My poetry, Poetry
Dear, dear sprite…
and more…
Her lightest step is all she needs
to round the garden in her tour,
she makes no stand,
and fills the air with cherub chatter,
she makes scant imprint in the earth…
The elfin miss delights in play,
so wild, winsome,
willing to sing
what happiness she feels,
we little know its measure
nor the nature of her laugh, her smile,
the chirp of her siren sound.
Dear, dear sprite, she hops and bounces,
we scarcely reck the eldritch stuff,
what seems of perverse end
does not sustain a care
beyond the moment’s wisp of dread
that’s clapped away in her dance.
Her lightest step is all she needs
to round the garden in her tour,
she makes no stand,
she flutters, frisks in merriment,
and makes her joy…
June 12, 2022
Inspired by the child, Pearl, in The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne.
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My poetry. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2024 All rights reserved.
How does a poem end?
“Finis,” my thoughts (my poem)
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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”
Your comments are welcome—tell me what you’re thinking.
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by Richard Subber | Mar 9, 2024 | Book reviews, Books, Human Nature, Joys of reading, Language
the good old way…
Book review:
Scaramouche
Rafael Sabatini (1875-1950)
New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1921
392 pages
These people talk to each other. It’s face-to-face communications. They pay attention to body language and what you do with your face.
Scaramouche ends the way you think it’s going to end: boy gets girl.
But there’s a lot of road to travel before we get to that ending—I think there’s only one reference to a heaving bosom—there is fastidious bad language, and lots of casual use of Latin—there’s a lot of hand kissing, which is something we could do more of these days.
Sabatini was a prolific writer and he wrote this romance novel the way it should be written. The reader gets an eyeful and an earful and a heartful of genuine romance, with all the words that make it work.
It’s still possible to make love in the good old way they did it in the 18th century. Read all about it.
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2024 All rights reserved.
The Scarlet Letter, victim of Hollywood
Nathaniel Hawthorne’s version is best
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 | Mar 7, 2024 | Human Nature, Reflections, Tidbits
hold hands and take a step….
“So we started where we were, in the not knowing.”
Anne Lamott (b1954)
November 20, 2023
It isn’t the not knowing where we want to go,
it’s the not knowing exactly how to get there
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Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2024 All rights reserved.
iambic pentameter, y’know?
da DUH, da DUH, and stuff…
“In search of”…my poem
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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 | Mar 5, 2024 | Book reviews, Books, Human Nature
don’t think about John of Arc
Book review:
Saint Joan
by Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
Baltimore, MD: Penguin Books, copyright 1924, rep. 1964
159 pages
Imagine that Joan of Arc had been John of Arc.
I’m no fan of “what if” history, but I dare to say that John might have become a saint without the burned-at-the-stake part.
Saint Joan is a play, so if stage directions are a distraction to you, you can just pretend that Shaw is whispering in your ear.
Shaw’s 42-page preface is historical treasure added to the literary treasure. He offers even more than you imagine about the life and context and historical significance of la pucelle de Domrémy.
All of the men whose lives she crossed accepted Joan’s exceptionalism. Many believed her story about hearing voices from the saints and from God.
Joan went to the fire without understanding that the kings and the generals wished that she had never been born.
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2024 All rights reserved.
Book review: The Bridges of Madison County
If you’re looking for
highly stoked eroticism
and high-rolling lives
that throw off sparks when they touch,
look elsewhere.
by Robert Waller
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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 | Feb 27, 2024 | Human Nature, Theater and play reviews
“We all love you, preacher!”
Movie review:
Pale Rider
“And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him.”
Revelation 6:8
Pale Rider (1985, rated R, 115 minutes) goes a bit deeper than your usual Clint Eastwood action thriller.
As “the preacher,” Eastwood creates a mostly low-key character who mostly waxes philosophic about life and its vicissitudes, but also persistently urges the good guys to do some good, and (you’re not surprised) straps on his big pistol when he needs it.
The beleaguered “tin pan” miners, emboldened by “the preacher,” battle the vicious takeover attempts by the big bad rich guy, and you can guess who savors victory.
There’s an almost completely platonic love interest with the mother, Sarah (Carrie Snodgress is divinely demure), and 15-year-old Megan (Sydney Penny) learns a lot about unrequited love.
Pale Rider invites you to look into the hearts of realistic people.
The obvious allusion to Revelation 6:8 (“…behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death…”) is puzzling. The preacher is not apocalyptic, there is no hint of theology in his role, and he mysteriously and provocatively rides away into the mountains at the last minute, leaving everyone else to resume their lives.
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Movie review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2024 All rights reserved.
Book review: Shantung Compound
They didn’t care much
about each other…
by Langdon Gilkey
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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 | Feb 22, 2024 | Book reviews, Books, Human Nature
to each his or her own…
Book review:
On Chesil Beach
by Ian McEwan (b1948)
New York: Nan A. Talese, Doubleday, 2007
203 pages
Most likely you will find yourself undeniably drawn to keep turning the pages of On Chesil Beach.
It’s a quiet book, but it’s loaded with exotically passionate words and moments and discoveries about the very private concepts of love that Edward and Florence bring to their marriage in 1962.
There is almost none of the heaving bosom stuff that corrupts so many tales about love, and the language is realistic, almost chaste.
Ian McEwan lets the two lovers try to talk to each other about stuff that they deeply feel but for which they hardly know the words.
There is a sad, and sadly understandable, ending.
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2024 All rights reserved.
Book review: The Financier
Theodore Dreiser’s villain…
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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