Month: January 2014

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Informer

To the Comptroller’s, and with him by coach to White Hall; in our way meeting Venner and Pritchard upon a sledge, who with two more Fifth Monarchy men were hanged to-day, and the two first drawn and quartered. Where we walked up and down, and at last found Sir G. Carteret, whom I had not seen a great while, and did discourse with him about our assisting the Commissioners in paying off the Fleet, which we think to decline. Here the Treasurer did tell me that he did suspect Thos. Hater to be an informer of them in this work, which we do take to be a diminution of us, which do trouble me, and I do intend to find out the truth.
Hence to my Lady, who told me how Mr. Hetley is dead of the small-pox going to Portsmouth with my Lord. My Lady went forth to dinner to her father’s, and so I went to the Leg in King Street and had a rabbit for myself and my Will, and after dinner I sent him home and myself went to the Theatre, where I saw “The Lost Lady,” which do not please me much. Here I was troubled to be seen by four of our office clerks, which sat in the half-crown box and I in the 1s. 6d.
From thence by link, and bought two mouse traps of Thomas Pepys, the Turner, and so went and drank a cup of ale with him, and so home and wrote by post to Portsmouth to my Lord and so to bed.

I meet on a ledge
with two men hanged today.
We walk up and down.

The commissioners pay me
to be an informer on the dead

with my theater of clerks,
two mousetraps
and a rank-rot mouth.


Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Saturday 19 January 1660/61.

Posted on by Luisa A. Igloria

Panis Angelicus

This entry is part 13 of 23 in the series Morning Porch Poems: Winter 2013-14

During the war, his grandmother was part of what they used to call a concert brigade. Once she sang at a programme that included the legendary Oistrakh. Bombs were falling through the sky, the city in ruins; and yet people came to listen, those who were not yet dead, those who refused to be done in by their daily ration of half a roll of dry brown bread, one cube of sugar, a hundred grams of vodka for courage. Snow fell, or freezing rain; and who anymore had good clothes? But they curled up like leaves in the shabby remnants of theatres, clutching their threadbare coats to their sides. They pressed their fingers to their cheeks as if they could inflate them with breath, as if the cadenzas might lead to a birth chamber— They would tumble like newborns into a world flooded with light: no echoes of guns, only a clearing in a birch forest filling with the cries of resurrected birds.

 

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Social drinker

The Captains went with me to the post-house about 9 o’clock, and after a morning draft I took horse and guide for London; and through some rain, and a great wind in my face, I got to London at eleven o’clock. At home found all well, but the monkey loose, which did anger me, and so I did strike her till she was almost dead, that they might make her fast again, which did still trouble me more. In the afternoon we met at the office and sat till night, and then I to see my father who I found well, and took him to Standing’s to drink a cup of ale. He told me my aunt at Brampton is yet alive and my mother well there. In comes Will Joyce to us drunk, and in a talking vapouring humour of his state, and I know not what, which did vex me cruelly. After him Mr. Hollier had learned at my father’s that I was here (where I had appointed to meet him) and so he did give me some things to take for prevention. Will Joyce not letting us talk as I would I left my father and him and took Mr. Hollier to the Greyhound, where he did advise me above all things, both as to the stone and the decay of my memory (of which I now complain to him), to avoid drinking often, which I am resolved, if I can, to leave off.
Hence home, and took home with me from the bookseller’s Ogilby’s Aesop, which he had bound for me, and indeed I am very much pleased with the book.
Home and to bed.

My monkey and I
make trouble
in a cup of ale.
Drunk, I talk to my hound
in the tone of an Aesop.


Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Friday 18 January 1660/61.

Posted on by Luisa A. Igloria

A pleasure

Farmer’s daughter, I
never knew what it was
to live alone for more
than twenty years, to live
in a house other than the one
my late husband the judge
took me to fifty years ago,
me no longer a new bride
but still thin-waisted,
hair lustrous enough to shape
into a beehive. I had cat’s-eye
spectacles, and I could pencil
a beauty mark on my cheek.
I did not have to figure
a tax return, did not have
my own bank account. My fingers
flew at the Singer sewing machine,
my feet sure on the treadle, working
on notions, silk, pin money. The wives
and daughters of mayors and councilors
sought out my smooth Peter Pan collars,
my keyhole necklines, the sharp darts
that lifted their breasts to daring.
I learned their common language at tea
and soirees, learned to buss on the cheeks,
Darling, sweetheart, always a pleasure
to be here and see you. Now I am shrill
at eighty, clutching my purse and keys
to my chest, never letting them out of sight.
I don’t understand piety anymore— no matter
how often I recite the prayers, they are bitter
and loud, louder than the wind in the trees
and their echo without cease in my ears.

 

In response to Via Negativa: Esprit de corps.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Esprit de corps

Up, and breakfast with my Lady. Then come Captains Cuttance and Blake to carry her in the barge on board; and so we went through Ham Creeke to the Soverayne (a goodly sight all the way to see the brave ships that lie here) first, which is a most noble ship. I never saw her before. My Lady Sandwich, my Lady Jemimah, Mrs. Browne, Mrs. Grace, and Mary and the page, my lady’s servants and myself, all went into the lanthorn together. From thence to the Charles, where my lady took great pleasure to see all the rooms, and to hear me tell her how things are when my Lord is there. After we had seen all, then the officers of the ship had prepared a handsome breakfast for her, and while she was pledging my Lord’s health they give her five guns. That done, we went off, and then they give us thirteen guns more. I confess it was a great pleasure to myself to see the ship that I begun my good fortune in. From thence on board the Newcastle, to show my Lady the difference between a great and a small ship. Among these ships I did give away 7l.. So back again and went on shore at Chatham, where I had ordered the coach to wait for us. Here I heard that Sir William Batten and his lady (who I knew were here, and did endeavour to avoyd) were now gone this morning to London. So we took coach, and I went into the coach, and went through the town, without making stop at our inn, but left J. Goods to pay the reckoning. So I rode with my lady in the coach, and the page on the horse that I should have rid on — he desiring it. It begun to be dark before we could come to Dartford, and to rain hard, and the horses to fayle, which was our great care to prevent, for fear of my Lord’s displeasure, so here we sat up for to-night, as also Captains Cuttance and Blake, who came along with us. We sat and talked till supper, and at supper my Lady and I entered into a great dispute concerning what were best for a man to do with his estate — whether to make his elder son heir, which my Lady is for, and I against, but rather to make all equall. This discourse took us much time, till it was time to go to bed; but we being merry, we bade my Lady goodnight, and intended to have gone to the Post-house to drink, and hear a pretty girl play of the cittern (and indeed we should have lain there, but by a mistake we did not), but it was late, and we could not hear her, and the guard came to examine what we were; so we returned to our Inn and to bed, the page and I in one bed, and the two captains in another, all in one chamber, where we had very good mirth with our most abominable lodging.

We all went into the thorn
together—a great pleasure.
We prepared breakfast
for thirteen guns—a pleasure.
How the ship went through
the dark and rain! A pleasure.
We entered into a dispute:
a guard came
to examine our mirth
with our most abominable lodging.


Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Thursday 17 January 1660/61.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

The Canela tweets

fearless tracker

I use Twitter for a bit more than just Morning Porch updates these days. Three weeks of dog-sitting — and especially dog-walking — yielded a few insights, which I shared on Twitter because they weren’t really long enough for blog posts. Canela is an eight- or nine-year-old Chesapeake Bay retriever with a very easy-going disposition, boundless energy and an insatiable curiosity. We walked three to four miles every day. Anyway, for what it’s worth, here’s what I’ve been writing. (The first and last of these also appeared on The Morning Porch.)

Jan. 2
Dozens of juncos flit through the bushes. The old brown retriever that I’m dog-sitting watches from the porch, her nose quivering.

Jan. 12
Trying to teach sarcasm to the dog.

Before I can stop her, the dog wolfs down a frozen coyote turd.

Just back from a three-mile walk full of fascinating scats and urine samples, the dog falls asleep on her Dora the Explorer blanket.

Before I started dog-sitting, I had no idea how much I talk to myself.

The dog’s sleep is punctuated with sighs and episodes of labored breathing. She snores. She smacks her lips.

She rumbles like an appliance with a bad motor.

Her jaws move as if around recalcitrant syllables of human speech. Then she dry-retches and falls silent.

Jan. 13
I just complimented a dog for taking a dump. This pet thing is insidious.

Jan. 14
The dog appears to have two modes: full-on excitement and sleep. I of course am an Eeyore and an insomniac. What a disappointment I must be.

On a walk in the thawing woods, the dog smells everything. All I smell is dog.

Going out to pee in the moonlight, the dog stands gazing into the shadows.

Jan. 15
Having just circled the field, more than anything the dog want to circle the field.

You can’t circle the same field twice, as Heraclitus might’ve said.

Like a suburban kid getting a “tribal” tattoo, the dog wants desperately to roll in coyote scent.

Straining against the leash that won’t let her catch up to a porcupine, the dog whines and whimpers like a creature in pain.

Jan. 16
Ten minutes after telling our neighbor that the dog never barks, I hear her bark, left alone in the house.

So the dog doesn’t bark at people, other dogs, deer, ruffed grouse, rabbits or porcupines. She barks at the absence of all those things.

Jan. 18
Last night, I gave the dog back to her family. In the morning, two inches of wind-blown snow, and the yard unmarred by a single track.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Walt Whitman, over-protective parent

This morning I went early to the Comptroller’s and so with him by coach to Whitehall, to wait upon Mr. Coventry to give him an account of what we have done, which having done, I went away to wait upon my Lady; but coming to her lodgings I find that she is gone this morning to Chatham by coach, thinking to meet me there, which did trouble me exceedingly, and I did not know what to do, being loth to follow her, and yet could not imagine what she would do when she found me not there. In this trouble, I went to take a walk in Westminster Hall and by chance met with Mr. Child, who went forth with my Lady to-day, but his horse being bad, he come back again, which then did trouble me more, so that I did resolve to go to her; and so by boat home and put on my boots, and so over to Southwarke to the posthouse, and there took horse and guide to Dartford and thence to Rochester (I having good horses and good way, come thither about half-an-hour after daylight, which was before 6 o’clock and I set forth after two), where I found my Lady and her daughter Jem., and Mrs. Browne and five servants, all at a great loss, not finding me here, but at my coming she was overjoyed. The sport was how she had intended to have kept herself unknown, and how the Captain (whom she had sent for) of the Charles had forsoothed her, though he knew her well and she him. In fine we supped merry and so to bed, there coming several of the Charles’s men to see me before, I got to bed. The page lay with me.

I went early, but find he is gone. I did not know what to do, being loath to follow, and yet—
a child went forth
on an unknown page.


Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Wednesday 16 January 1660/61.

Posted on by Luisa A. Igloria

Slaughter

Oh ruminants that docile stand
on pasture-land and long green meadow,

when I think of how you lower your heads
through the day to the sweet nuzzle of grass

and how you wear a halter of sunlight mostly
loosely across your backs, I give pause

which I want to think of as a kind of thanks
before I turn my hand or mouth toward the tasks

of domestic transformation. Someone else
has rendered skin and gristle and bone, taken

abstractions of flesh: marbled slabs and glistening
circles that mean a form of sustenance, in other

instances a surplus of meanings beyond food—
The waiter in the chophouse recites the many

different virtues of Kobe beef as if it were
an epic poem, and the impeccably dressed diners

look slightly flushed, as if they were in
the presence of a holy object— They lean

in to inspect the thin filet. But we
are closer than they could imagine, chain

after chain linked in a web going around the world:
water where fish leap and shining insects hover,

smaller creatures that flatten their ears, attentive
to the vocation of predators in field and sky.

Block after block of homes, in each a pretty kitchen
with appliances humming to themselves in the dark;

and copper-clad pots and metal implements bright
as the day they were bought, knowing nothing yet

except water and soap: knowing nothing yet of how
the largest basin is wide enough to catch the major

organs lifted out of the cavity: heart, liver, spleen;
sweetbreads bathed in blood like ink that stains the fingers.

 

In response to Via Negativa: Gated community.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Palimpsest

Up and down the yard all the morning and seeing the seamen exercise, which they do already very handsomely.
Then to dinner at Mr. Ackworth’s, where there also dined with us one Captain Bethell, a friend of the Comptroller’s. A good dinner and very handsome. After that and taking our leaves of the officers of the yard, we walked to the waterside and in our way walked into the rope-yard, where I do look into the tar-houses and other places, and took great notice of all the several works belonging to the making of a cable.
So after a cup of burnt wine at the tavern there, we took barge and went to Blackwall and viewed the dock and the new Wet dock, which is newly made there, and a brave new merchantman which is to be launched shortly, and they say to be called the Royal Oak.
Hence we walked to Dick-Shore, and thence to the Towre and so home. Where I found my wife and Pall abroad, so I went to see Sir W. Pen, and there found Mr. Coventry come to see him, and now had an opportunity to thank him, and he did express much kindness to me. I sat a great while with Sir Wm. after he was gone, and had much talk with him. I perceive none of our officers care much for one another, but I do keep in with them all as much as I can. Sir W. Pen is still very ill as when I went. Home, where my wife not yet come home, so I went up to put my papers in order, and then was much troubled my wife was not come, it being 10 o’clock just now striking as I write this last line.
This day I hear the Princess is recovered again. The King hath been this afternoon at Deptford, to see the yacht that Commissioner Pett is building, which will be very pretty; as also that that his brother at Woolwich is in making.
By and by comes in my boy and tells me that his mistress do lie this night at Mrs. Hunt’s, who is very ill, with which being something satisfied, I went to bed.

All morning seeing
the sea at work
making a new shore,
I press pen to paper
and write over
the afternoon lie.


Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Tuesday 15 January 1660/61.