by Richard Subber | Dec 30, 2025 | Human Nature, My poetry, Poetry, Reflections
thinking it over…
think about it
We’re walking, slow.
What’s he thinking?
What’s her fleeting joy?
Maybe they ask the same of me.
Are we really different?
I’m bigger,
they have growing to do.
I can see out the window,
they see so many things
for the first time.
I remember last week’s party,
they will re-learn the fun
of blowing out the candles.
I can ride a horse,
they can see a horse where the chair is.
I wish I could stay longer,
they will welcome my return…
…but for now, we climb the bosky trail,
hand in hand, we laugh together,
we chase that squirrel with our eyes,
we wonder:
what’s he thinking?
what’s his fleeting joy?
maybe he’s asking the same of us.
September 7, 2025
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My poetry. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2025 All rights reserved.
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many waters: more poems with 53 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”
Your comments are welcome—tell me what you’re thinking.
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by Richard Subber | Dec 27, 2025 | Human Nature, Reflections, Tidbits
…always more to learn…
“…people whose lives
have been made various by learning…”
Mary Ann Evans “George Eliot” (1819-1880)
English novelist, an icon in Victorian literature
from Silas Marner, p. 24
It’s so easy to think that learning is only about knowledge.
Learning changes lives and living. I don’t mind thinking that what I have learned in my life, and the learning that I continue to enjoy, has made me more various than I otherwise might have been.
You could say that variousness is the spice of life…some people might say it another way…
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Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2025 All rights reserved.
Book review: American Colonies
So many and so much
came before the Pilgrims
by Alan Taylor
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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 18, 2025 | Tidbits
ain’t it the truth…
“It does not require many words
to speak the truth.”
Chief Joseph or Hin-mah-too-yah-lat-kekt (“Thunder rolling down the mountain”) (1840-1904)
Chief of the Wallowa of the Nez Perce (Niimiipu)
Let’s keep telling the truth about what’s going on in America.
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Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2025 All rights reserved.
A Farewell to Arms (book review)
classic Ernest Hemingway
with relentlessly realistic dialogue…
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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 | Dec 13, 2025 | Theater and play reviews
we’re talking heart and soul…
Movie review:
The Hustler
Okay, first things first: the pool table action in The Hustler (1961, not rated, 134 minutes) is rather tame. Most of the shots are obscurely impossible, but successful.
Paul Newman as “Fast Eddie” Felson, the “hustler” who finally wins the big game for big stakes, is, of course, iconic. His character is repetitive and becomes predictable: “I can beat him” isn’t a line of script, it’s a refrain.
Jackie Gleason’s role has name recognition (as “Minnesota Fats”) but it is two-dimensional and secondary. George C. Scott (as Bert Gordon) is a stereotype with a bankroll.
Everybody smokes too much. Ugh!
You should try The Hustler again to take another look at Piper Laurie (as Sarah Packard). She is the largely unheralded heavy hitter in this film. She is the foil for Newman’s thrashing self-doubt. She is the paragon of sensitivity and desperately loving kindness that the men in this tragedy barely hope to become. She speaks truth to gutless macho men. She was nominated for an Academy Award as Best Actress.
Newman and Gleason and Scott are the action in The Hustler.
Piper Laurie is the heart and soul.
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Movie review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2025 All rights reserved.
Book review: Who Built America?
…including people
who got their hands dirty
by Christopher Clark and Nancy Hewitt
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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 | Dec 4, 2025 | American history, Book reviews, Books, History, Human Nature, Reflections
the far side of yourself…
Book review:
The Things They Carried
by Tim O’Brien (b1946)
New York: Broadway Books, 1990
273 pages
Tim O’Brien is a Vietnam war veteran.
If you served in the Vietnam war, you have a perspective for reading The Things They Carried.
If you didn’t go to Vietnam, you have a different perspective.
If you weren’t born until after the war ended, you have a different perspective.
Tim O’Brien speaks to you, read his words any way you want.
All of us are still carrying some of the things we carried in those years.
Can anyone point to feelings that haven’t changed since then?
Whether you’re a veteran or not, O’Brien invites you to get “in touch with the far side of yourself” (p. 123).
The Things They Carried is about burdens and our capacity to accept them.
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2025 All rights reserved.
Book review: To Serve Them All My Days
by R. F. Delderfield
A beloved teacher,
you know this story…
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many waters: more poems with 53 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 | Nov 29, 2025 | Human Nature, Reflections, Tidbits
we made our present…
“…if we persevere and remain generous of heart,
we may be granted
a moment of supreme lucidity—
a moment in which all that has happened to us
suddenly comes into focus
as a necessary course of events…”
from A Gentleman in Moscow
by Amor Towles (b1964)
New York: Penguin Books, 2016
462 pages
p. 441
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Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2025 All rights reserved.
84, Charing Cross Road (book review)
Helene Hanff, on reading good books…
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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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