Purveyors of fine poetry since 2003.
All the day long looking upon my workmen who this day began to paint my parlour. Only at noon my Lady Batten and my wife came home, and so I stepped to my Lady’s, where were Sir John Lawson and Captain Holmes, and there we dined and had very good red wine of my Lady’s own making in England.
All day long looking upon my paint,
I am in the red
of my own making.
Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Thursday 13 December 1660.
“Oh to count the stars in the sky!
How many should we count for just one to be moved?”
~ from “Guest Songs,” An Anthology of Chuvash Poetry, trans. Peter France
If you’ve ever opened the door
to a haze of smoke draped
over the entire town—
If you’ve ever decided not to worry
that in the night, someone has taken
down your house numbers—
If you’ve ever placed the seed of a hot
pepper on your tongue just to feel
how a small thing burns—
If you’ve ever kept back something
amounting to the best part for the best
that was supposed to come—
If you’ve ever grit your teeth
through the deepening pain shooting up
your right leg and hip at night—
If you’ve ever tried to quiet an aviary
of the moment’s most insoluble problems
set loose in your chest—
If you’ve ever curled your toes or
clenched your fingers while reciting
a prayer or spell inside your head—
If you’ve ever woken in the early hours
to the hard clear sound, the flinch
of metal rung on metal—
Rare weather visits
now more often: snow
in Egypt, strange fits
of heat that torch and thaw
the icecaps— No profit
from citrus in the icy maw
of wind: only count the heads
of the stricken, the broken beds.
In response to Via Negativa: Wrecked.
Troubled with the absence of my wife. This morning I went (after the Comptroller and I had sat an hour at the office) to Whitehall to dine with my Lady, and after dinner to the Privy Seal and sealed abundance of pardons and little else. From thence to the Exchequer and did give my mother Bowyer a visit and her daughters, the first time that I have seen them since I went last to sea. From thence up with J. Spicer to his office and took 100l., and by coach with it as far as my father’s, where I called to see them, and my father did offer me six pieces of gold, in lieu of six pounds that he borrowed of me the other day, but it went against me to take it of him and therefore did not, though I was afterwards a little troubled that I did not.
Thence home, and took out this 100l. and sealed it up with the other last night, it being the first 200l. that ever I saw together of my own in my life. For which God be praised.
So to my Lady Batten, and sat an hour or two, and talked with her daughter and people in the absence of her father and mother and my wife to pass away the time. After that home and to bed, reading myself asleep, while the wench sat mending my breeches by my bedside.
I had at sea
an abundance of sea,
spice and gold
in lieu of god,
the absence of time.
At home, I sleep,
the wench mending my breeches
by my bed.
Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Wednesday 12 December 1660.
Only close your eyes,
the teacher said; to hold
the image lightly in your mind,
do not fear how quickly
the slide is changed,
how brilliance fades.
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.
My wife and I up very early this day, and though the weather was very bad and the wind high, yet my Lady Batten and her maid and we two did go by our barge to Woolwich (my Lady being very fearfull) where we found both Sir Williams and much other company, expecting the weather to be better, that they might go about weighing up the Assurance, which lies there (poor ship, that I have been twice merry in, in Captn. Holland’s time,) under water, only the upper deck may be seen and the masts. Captain Stoakes is very melancholy, and being in search for some clothes and money of his, which he says he hath lost out of his cabin. I did the first office of a justice of Peace to examine a seaman thereupon, but could find no reason to commit him.
This last tide the Kingsale was also run aboard and lost her mainmast, by another ship, which makes us think it ominous to the Guiny voyage, to have two of her ships spoilt before they go out.
After dinner, my Lady being very fearfull she staid and kept my wife there, and I and another gentleman, a friend of Sir W. Pen’s, went back in the barge, very merry by the way, as far as Whitehall in her. To the Privy Seal, where I signed many pardons and some few things else. From thence Mr. Moore and I into London to a tavern near my house, and there we drank and discoursed of ways how to put out a little money to the best advantage, and at present he has persuaded me to put out 250l. for 50l. per annum for eight years, and I think I shall do it.
Thence home, where I found the wench washing, and I up to my study, and there did make up an even 100l., and sealed it to lie by. After that to bed.
I found other weather—
poor ship that I have been—
under water.
In search of peace
I stayed there and drank
in the sea.
Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Tuesday 11 December 1660.
At the Lantern Review blog, poet Henry W. Leung has posted a glowing and insightful review of Luisa’s latest book, The Saints of Streets.
“Hokusai believed in the slow / perfectibility of forms” (3), begins Luisa A. Igloria’s newest book of poems, The Saints of Streets. She has been writing a poem a day since 2010, a project archived online and from which this collection was born. Given how prolific she is, I could not help but find in these opening lines a reassurance that the poems collected here are not merely practice but are a practice. For perfectibility, the poem goes on to say, is “the way, // after seventy-five years or more, the eye / might finally begin to understand / the quality of a singular filament—” Indeed, this is a book of single filaments, and in these poems are so much delight and wisdom, often beginning in the mundane but nearly always spiraling inward to the sacred.
Read the rest (and consider ordering the book).
of the earnestness in my (speaker’s) tone, of how her poems have at their heart concerns outside the self, which are also concerns within the self: meditations on massacre and greed, our great consuming appetites, our endless griefs, our pockets full of disaster, loose change of fortunes brought by the winds of commerce and calamity. How to answer, you ask? And then so smartly you say, by witnessing, in the tradition of documentary poetics. Coin for coin, money for money. The ledger’s filled with such scribbling. The mail brings your bill of return, wherein you send regrets, say you longed for a particular allowance for the gray, the deepening that comes from specificity and contradiction. How have you not noticed the details? Hummingbird drinking from a shattered dish. Fingers, breasts, and pelvises uncovered from the earth of hasty burial. The fallen, the fallen, the fallen whose faces are mostly dark, even after all this time.
In response to Via Negativa: Ovine.
Up exceedingly early to go to the Comptroller, but he not being up and it being a very fine, bright, moonshine morning I went and walked all alone twenty turns in Cornhill, from Gracious Street corner to the Stockes and back again, from 6 o’clock till past 7, so long that I was weary, and going to the Comptroller’s thinking to find him ready, I found him gone, at which I was troubled, and being weary went home, and from thence with my wife by water to Westminster, and put her to my father Bowyer’s (they being newly come out of the country), but I could not stay there, but left her there. I to the Hall and there met with Col. Slingsby. So hearing that the Duke of York is gone down this morning, to see the ship sunk yesterday at Woolwich, he and I returned by his coach to the office, and after that to dinner. After dinner he came to me again and sat with me at my house, and among other discourse he told me that it is expected that the Duke will marry the Lord Chancellor’s daughter at last which is likely to be the ruin of Mr. Davis and my Lord Barkley, who have carried themselves so high against the Chancellor; Sir Chas. Barkley swearing that he and others had lain with her often, which all believe to be a lie.
He and I in the evening to the Coffee House in Cornhill, the first time that ever I was there, and I found much pleasure in it, through the diversity of company and discourse.
Home and found my wife at my Lady Batten’s, and have made a bargain to go see the ship sunk at Woolwich, where both the Sir Williams are still since yesterday, and I do resolve to go along with them. From thence home and up to bed, having first been into my study, and to ease my mind did go to cast up how my cash stands, and I do find as near as I can that I am worth in money clear 240l., for which God be praised.
This afternoon there was a couple of men with me with a book in each of their hands, demanding money for pollmoney, and I overlooked the book and saw myself set down Samuel Pepys, gent. 10s. for himself and for his servants 2s., which I did presently pay without any dispute, but I fear I have not escaped so, and therefore I have long ago laid by 10l. for them, but I think I am not bound to discover myself.
We walk till weary, all in wool,
to dinner after dinner,
and in the evening go see the ship
sunk in the clear afternoon,
money for money
and self for escaped self.
Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Monday 10 December 1660.
and who to underwrite its work
of mystery and augmenting?
Who can know the sadness of twenty
whales that beached themselves,
or the single arrow that threaded
through their souls and stitched them
just a few hundred paces from where
the water unrolled its thinnest coverlet?
In response to Via Negativa: When the wind died.