…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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© 2025 – 2026, Richard Subber. All rights reserved.