Via Negativa

March 22, 2024March 23, 2024 by Luisa A. Igloria

Living the life

river in November light between bare woods and mountain

of the mind, or any other kind of life,
requires living in a body. But the body's
problems are manifold; repeating and

repeatable, even as they're unknowable. 
Hannah Arendt wrote The Life of the Mind
to query how thinking connects the active

life and the contemplative mind. She asked, 
"What are we doing when we do nothing 
but think?" As we discover, the world

of appearances from which we draw
evidence of our science and art, reveals
as well as conceals. The moment the mind

lights on a string of inverted clouds, science
comes up with a name for it. But no one has yet
definitively answered what it all means: we are 

trial and error. This is what we call the ineffable—never
 arriving at zero, or upon arrival, finding out the restless
mind is off again to dance with the next illusion.

March 21, 2024March 21, 2024 by Luisa A. Igloria

Up very early, and to work and study in my chamber, and then to Whitehall to my Lord, and there did stay with him a good while discoursing upon his accounts. Here I staid with Mr. Creed all the morning, and at noon dined with my Lord, who was very merry, and after dinner we sang and fiddled a great while. Then I by water (Mr. Shepley, Pinkney, and others going part of the way) home, and then hard at work setting my papers in order, and writing letters till night, and so to bed.
This day I saw the Florence Ambassador go to his audience, the weather very foul, and yet he and his company very gallant. After I was a-bed Sir W. Pen sent to desire me to go with him to-morrow morning to meet Sir W. Batten coming from Rochester.

early to work
in the pink part
of a hard day

the weather is any
desire to go
in a chest

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Thursday 21 March 1660/61.

March 20, 2024March 20, 2024 by Luisa A. Igloria

Almost April

How do you pretend you're no longer
connected to someone whose blood
is your blood, whose eyes you see

when you look into the mirror, whose
forehead is the same smooth brown
instead of a billboard across which

warnings to stay away have been spray-
painted? I don't think I could, even if I 
tried. I'm not even sure I know how. But

I grow unsteady, moving into these new 
thickets of later life. I weep into the soup, 
brighten at the sound of bells, at the effusions

of spring. Every morning I swing my legs
out of a dream and back into the world.

March 20, 2024 by Dave Bonta

Pilgrimage

At the office all the morning, dined at home and Mr. Creed and Mr. Shepley with me, and after dinner we did a good deal of business in my study about my Lord’s accounts to be made up and presented to our office. That done to White Hall to Mr. Coventry, where I did some business with him, and so with Sir W. Pen (who I found with Mr. Coventry teaching of him upon the map to understand Jamaica). By water in the dark home, and so to my Lady Batten’s where my wife was, and there we sat and eat and drank till very late, and so home to bed.
The great talk of the town is the strange election that the City of London made yesterday for Parliament-men; viz. Fowke, Love, Jones, and Thompson, men that are so far from being episcopall that they are thought to be Anabaptists; and chosen with a great deal of zeal, in spite of the other party that thought themselves very strong, calling out in the Hall, “No Bishops! no Lord Bishops!” It do make people to fear it may come to worse, by being an example to the country to do the same. And indeed the Bishops are so high, that very few do love them.

off the map
under the dark bed

far from all other selves
to try to love

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Wednesday 20 March 1660/61.

March 19, 2024March 19, 2024 by Luisa A. Igloria

Pruning

Newly shorn limbs in afternoon sun, pale
pith enclosed in jackets of bark— Yearly

in spring, the tree suffers this offering. 
Really, it's us who bring the bladed teeth  

of pruning saws to bear on an idea of
proliferation. Stores of energy lie in its roots, 

crown, trunk. The principle is the generation 
of more vigorous increase by reducing 

the number of growing points. All shearing 
results in a wound whose closure and healing 

depend on time and the body's immediate 
properties. In summer, after the buds 

unfurl their whole bodies, ripeness
is a beautiful fruit the color of bruise.

March 19, 2024 by Dave Bonta

Dispossessed

We met at the office this morning about some particular business, and then I to Whitehall, and there dined with my Lord, and after dinner Mr. Creed and I to White-Fryars, where we saw “The Bondman” acted most excellently, and though I have seen it often, yet I am every time more and more pleased with Betterton’s action. From thence with him and young Mr. Jones to Penell’s in Fleet Street, and there we drank and talked a good while, and so I home and to bed.

off the land
in my white cell

I see time more and more
as action

and you nest
in a rank bed

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Tuesday 19 March 1660/61.

March 18, 2024March 18, 2024 by Luisa A. Igloria

I Look at Old Photographs and Remember

Weekends, we used to take the children
to the park, or what used to be the American
base where there was a mini-golf and skating
rink; a playground with cheerful painted animals
you could mount, spinners, teeter-totters 
and monkey bars. There they could have
their fill of grass to run and tumble in 
under the towering pines while we sat
on benches, until they tired and wanted 
a cold drink or an ice cream. To the west,
we could glimpse some of the road
that led past Teacher's Camp to Mines
View Park, where tourists tossed coins
into the gorge and posed with natives 
wearing g-strings and feathered caps. 
At that time, only members could get into
the Country Club, or dine at their smör-
gåsbord, or swim laps in their pool. Still,
I don't feel my children were deprived
of any joy. On cold mornings, they sat
together in bed, sneezing into tissues
while reading picture books. The world
then was everything we could name 
with certainty, not yet knowing how it 
could divide us from each other.

March 18, 2024March 18, 2024 by Dave Bonta

Poetry Blog Digest 2024, Week 11

A personal selection of posts from the Poetry Blogging Network and beyond. Although I tend to quote my favorite bits, please do click through and read the whole posts. You can also browse the blog digest archive, subscribe to its RSS feed in your favorite feed reader, or, if you’d like it in your inbox, subscribe on Substack.

This week: scrunched-up days, black-tailed godwits, Arawak petroglyphs, some determinedly unblossoming daffodils, and more. Enjoy.

March 18, 2024 by Dave Bonta

Crisis actors

This morning early Sir W. Batten went to Rochester, where he expects to be chosen Parliament man.
At the office all the morning, dined at home and with my wife to Westminster, where I had business with the Commissioner for paying the seamen about my Lord’s pay, and my wife at Mrs. Hunt’s.
I called her home, and made inquiry at Greatorex’s and in other places to hear of Mr. Barlow (thinking to hear that he is dead), but I cannot find it so, but the contrary. Home and called at my Lady Batten’s, and supped there, and so home.
This day an ambassador from Florence was brought into the town in state.
Good hopes given me to-day that Mrs. Davis is going away from us, her husband going shortly to Ireland. Yesterday it was said was to be the day that the Princess Henrietta was to marry the Duke d’Anjou in France.
This day I found in the newes-booke that Roger Pepys is chosen at Cambridge for the town, the first place that we hear of to have made their choice yet.
To bed with my head and mind full of business, which do a little put me out of order, and I do find myself to become more and more thoughtful about getting of money than ever heretofore.

a parliament of ice
paying the dead to go away

in the news is a place
made out of thought

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Monday 18 March 1660/61.