Month: August 2013

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Grayscale

This morning I went to White Hall with Sir W. Pen by water, who in our passage told me how he was bred up under Sir W. Batten. We went to Mr. Coventry’s chamber, and consulted of drawing my papers of debts of the Navy against the afternoon for the Committee. So to the Admiralty, where W. Hewer and I did them, and after that he went to his Aunts Blackburn (who has a kinswoman dead at her house to-day, and was to be buried to-night, by which means he staid very late out). I to Westminster Hall, where I met Mr. Crew and dined with him, where there dined one Mr. Hickeman, an Oxford man, who spoke very much against the height of the new old-clergy, for putting out many of the religious fellows of Colleges, and inveighing against them for their being drunk, which, if true, I am sorry to hear.
After that towards Westminster, where I called on Mr. Pim, and there found my velvet coat (the first that ever I had) done, and a velvet mantle, which I took to the Privy Seal Office, and there locked them up, and went to the Queen’s Court, and there, after much waiting, spoke with Colonel Birch, who read my papers, and desired some addition, which done I returned to the Privy Seal, where little to do, and with Mr. Moore towards London, and in our way meeting Monsieur Eschar (Mr. Montagu’s man), about the Savoy, he took us to the Brazennose Tavern, and there drank and so parted, and I home by coach, and there, it being post-night, I wrote to my Lord to give him notice that all things are well; that General Monk is made Lieutenant of Ireland, which my Lord Roberts (made Deputy) do not like of, to be Deputy to any man but the King himself. After that to bed.

White and black:
day buried night
in birch paper.
A Zen monk.
Any hat.


Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Tuesday 21 August 1660.

Posted on by Luisa A. Igloria

Cultivar

This entry is part 4 of 18 in the series Morning Porch Poems: Summer 2013

 

Something is growing in the garden bed
alongside the jasmine, alongside rows

of bittermelon that not even the aphids
will touch— Weed or wildflower, hybrid

or accidental, portmanteau of slug
and flower? I’d ask the clear-veined

dragonfly, I’d ask the hornet
but for its sting. I’d ask the night-

blooming cereus but it shows
its face only once a year.

 

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

A Drinking Reed

(Office day). As Sir W. Pen and I were walking in the garden, a messenger came to me from the Duke of York to fetch me to the Lord Chancellor. So (Mrs. Turner with her daughter The. being come to my house to speak with me about a friend of hers to send to sea) I went with her in her coach as far as Worcester House, but my Lord Chancellor being gone to the House of Lords, I went thither, and (there being a law case before them this day) got in, and there staid all the morning, seeing their manner of sitting on woolpacks, &c., which I never did before.
After the House was up, I spoke to my Lord, and had order from him to come to him at night. This morning Mr. Creed did give me the Papers that concern my Lord’s sea commission, which he left in my hands and went to sea this day to look after the gratuity money. This afternoon at the Privy Seal, where reckoning with Mr. Moore, he had got 100l. for me together, which I was glad of, guessing that the profits of this month would come to 100l.
In the evening I went all alone to drink at Mr. Harper’s, where I found Mrs. Crisp’s daughter, with whom and her friends I staid and drank, and so with W. Hewer by coach to Worcester House, where I light, sending him home with the 100l. that I received to-day. Here I staid, and saw my Lord Chancellor come into his Great Hall, where wonderful how much company there was to expect him at a Seal.
Before he would begin any business, he took my papers of the state of the debts of the Fleet, and there viewed them before all the people, and did give me his advice privately how to order things, to get as much money as we can of the Parliament.
That being done, I went home, where I found all my things come home from sea (sent by desire by Mr. Dun), of which I was glad, though many of my things are quite spoilt with mould by reason of lying so long a shipboard, and my cabin being not tight. I spent much time to dispose of them tonight, and so to bed.

I fetch a friend to send to sea
and see a reed reckoning
the profits of drink.
How much to expect of vice?
I found all my desire
quite spoiled by reason.


Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Monday 20 August 1660.

Posted on by Luisa A. Igloria

Memory: A Tonic

This entry is part 3 of 18 in the series Morning Porch Poems: Summer 2013

 

You’re wrong, I do remember.
Behind every voice is your voice
disguised as some creature’s hiss or call,
behind every quicksilver shape your shape

disappearing into the bramble—
Is it that we rearrange the facts
to suit the memory, the memory to suit
the purposes of the heart, that organ

ripped out of the body of a snake
but still pumping at the bottom
of a clear shot glass? It’s waiting for you
to take it into your mouth and drink it in,

whole, warm, beating;
it’s waiting for you to swallow
this difficult thing mixed with blood
and liquor like it were nothing.

 

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

Posted on by Luisa A. Igloria

Recursive

This entry is part 2 of 18 in the series Morning Porch Poems: Summer 2013

 

Do not look for illumination.
Mostly there is the twitch that precedes
gesture, the button’s resistance
as you try to slide it into the too-small

aperture slashed in a finger-width
of cloth. And yes, I know it is hard to disregard
how tiny and even the stitches are,
how they ring the space

that had to be opened first
to make way for the fastening.
Don’t feel betrayed
if there is only silence

in the trees, months of near
continuous rain. Thoughts sometimes rush
to collect at the bottom of the drain pipe.
Other times they vaporize in the heat,

fall for the voices warbling discontent.
When it rains, I am oddly comforted.
The rain soaks through, asks me to give up
a little of myself. Asks me not to be so hard.

 

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

The Good Life

(Lord’s day). In the morning my wife tells me that the bitch has whelped four young ones and is very well after it, my wife having had a great fear that she would die thereof, the dog that got them being very big.
This morning Sir W. Batten, Pen, and myself, went to church to the churchwardens, to demand a pew, which at present could not be given us, but we are resolved to have one built. So we staid and heard Mr. Mills, a very, good minister.
Home to dinner, where my wife had on her new petticoat that she bought yesterday, which indeed is a very fine cloth and a fine lace; but that being of a light colour, and the lace all silver, it makes no great show.
Mr. Creed and my brother Tom dined with me. After dinner my wife went and fetched the little puppies to us, which are very pretty ones. After they were gone, I went up to put my papers in order, and finding my wife’s clothes lie carelessly laid up, I was angry with her, which I was troubled for. After that my wife and I went and walked in the garden, and so home to bed.

If that itch my fear would die,
I could have a fine dinner,
put my papers in order,
lie carelessly
with my wife
and walk in the garden.


Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Sunday 19 August 1660.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Mortal Ghazal: the videopoem

Via Negativa is proud to present a new videopoem by the Belgian artist and filmmaker Marc Neys, A.K.A. Swoon, and Luisa A. Igloria, with a text from Luisa’s new poetry collection, The Saints of Streets. Like many of the poems in the book, it debuted here at Via Negativa, with a prompt from an entry at The Morning Porch (July 12, 2012).

Marc and Luisa discuss their collaboration in a new post at Marc’s blog. Marc notes that,

Along with her recording, Luisa gave me some ideas and pointers where to look for possible images. One of the videos she proposed was http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=90qcjBE-jlA. The film is part of a collection of motion picture films that John Van Antwerp MacMurray shot during the time he served as American Minister to China (1925-1929). The 16mm silent movie was shot during a trip to the Philippines in October 1926, where MacMurray and his wife spent a few days at Camp John Hay, Baguio.

For her part, Luisa writes:

After getting more directly connected with Marc, I recorded three short poems from the collection that I thought might be good candidates. Marc selected “Mortal Ghazal” and I’m really happy that he did.

The poem’s recurrent rhyme is the word “everlasting” – it had started out as a meditation of sorts on a flower indigenous to Baguio, the mountain city where I grew up in the Philippines. The locals refer to them as “everlasting” flowers, but they are strawflowers or Helichrysum bracteatum (family Asteraceae). Locals wind them into leis and sell them to tourists. One of my dearest friends from childhood recently returned from a trip to Baguio, and brought a lei back for me.

Around ten years ago, this friend lost her only son, who grew up with my daughters in Baguio; and she has never really recovered from that grief; she has also just had surgery, and thinking about her and about our lives in that small mountain city so long ago, before we became what we are now, led me to writing this poem which is also a meditation on time/temporality, passage, absence and presence.

Click through to Marc’s blog to read the rest of their remarks.

Luisa just passed her 1000th day of writing a poem a day here (not to mention some additional poems that she’s also managed to write in her far-from-abundant free time). Many of the poems in The Saints of Streets have appeared in more prestigious organs too, of course, but I am proud of, and humbled by, the role that The Morning Porch and Via Negativa have played in eliciting this extraordinary creative outpouring from one of our (and the Philippines’) most talented and hardest working contemporary poets. I haven’t received my copy of The Saints of Streets yet, but here’s how poet Kristin Naca describes it:

Luisa Igloria’s The Saints of Streets overlays the landscapes we see with many more vanished. Houses, town halls, and cathedrals are held up by spires of memory; the past erupts and spills over when the poet focuses on particulars, “…nose pressed to the doorway between worlds/ lit by the same fire that singes the wings of bees.” Igloria begins, as we often do, with a yearning: followed by question, meditation—but the power of her gaze sets these poems apart. Observation magnetizes worlds into radical juxtaposition, and in these poems, measured, intuitive music splendidly unleashes the bewildering in the everyday.

Please visit the Books page on Luisa’s website for additional quotes and information on ordering.

Posted on by Luisa A. Igloria

Hoard

This entry is part 1 of 18 in the series Morning Porch Poems: Summer 2013

 

We keep things in drawers after we’ve pared them down
and turned them into miniatures: stamps, folded letters,

photographs— one of them shows there used to be a fountain
in the middle of the lake (in summer, a ring of lights

flashed at its base like fireflies). There’s a matchbox
from a museum in Prague that someone else (not us)

has visited; a baby tooth, a hair pick of coiled silver.
There are cords green as bottle glass, buttons from old coats

that have departed this world of usefulness and rue. There’s a pen
with a tip shaped like a lily. There are shells that we picked

from the littered shore, stones we’ve arranged on the sill—
citadels of some hidden city now overgrown with grass.

 

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Gifts

This morning I took my wife towards Westminster by water, and landed her at Whitefriars, with 5l. to buy her a petticoat, and I to the Privy Seal. By and by comes my wife to tell me that my father has persuaded her to buy a most fine cloth of 26s. a yard, and a rich lace, that the petticoat will come to 5l., at which I was somewhat troubled, but she doing it very innocently, I could not be angry.
I did give her more money, and sent her away, and I and Creed and Captain Hayward (who is now unkindly put out of the Plymouth to make way for Captain Allen to go to Constantinople, and put into his ship the Dover, which I know will trouble my Lord) went and dined at the Leg in King Street, where Captain Ferrers, my Lord’s Cornet, comes to us, who after dinner took me and Creed to the Cockpitt play, the first that I have had time to see since my coming from sea, “The Loyall Subject,” where one Kinaston, a boy, acted the Duke’s sister, but made the loveliest lady that ever I saw in my life, only her voice not very good. After the play done, we three went to drink, and by Captain Ferrers’ means, Kinaston and another that acted Archas, the General, came and drank with us. Hence home by coach, and after being trimmed, leaving my wife to look after her little bitch, which was just now a-whelping, I to bed.

I took my wife a friar’s coat,
a most fine cloth and a rich lace,
troubled money and a kind mouth,
a ship and a captain coming from sea—
the loveliest that ever I saw—
to look after her little bitch, which was just a-whelping.


Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Saturday 18 August 1660.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Nothingness

To the office, and that done home to dinner where Mr. Unthanke, my wife’s tailor, dined with us, we having nothing but a dish of sheep’s trotters. After dinner by water to Whitehall, where a great deal of business at the Privy Seal. At night I and Creed and the judge-Advocate went to Mr. Pim, the tailor’s, who took us to the Half Moon, and there did give us great store of wine and anchovies, and would pay for them all.
This night I saw Mr. Creed show many the strangest evasions to shift off his drink I ever saw in my life.
By coach home and to bed.

Nothing but water and the half moon.
Give us wine
and anchovies
and many strange evasions
to life and bed.


Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Friday 17 August 1660.