Purveyors of fine poetry since 2003.
Tonight I filled
a whole volume
with a clutch
of coughing,
which my oldest
book of illustrated
ailments said
was surely
the prologue
to an archive
of wind-related
afflictions—
There being
nothing left
to do but wait
and count,
I slipped
off my shoes,
rested in
an armchair
and agreed
to be fed a thick
slice of toast,
sprinkled with
brown sugar.
In response to Via Negativa: Anarchist's Dream.
The arms being come this morning from the Tower, we caused them to be distributed. I spent much time walking with Lieutenant Lambert, walking up and down the yards, who did give me much light into things there, and so went along with me and dined with us. After dinner Mrs. Pett, her husband being gone this morning with Sir W. Batten to Chatham, lent us her coach, and carried us to Woolwich, where we did also dispose of the arms there and settle the guards. So to Mr. Pett’s, the shipwright, and there supped, where he did treat us very handsomely (and strange it is to see what neat houses all the officers of the King’s yards have), his wife a proper woman, and has been handsome, and yet has a very pretty hand.
Thence I with Mr. Ackworth to his house, where he has a very pretty house, and a very proper lovely woman to his wife, who both sat with me in my chamber, and they being gone, I went to bed, which was also most neat and fine.
Give me light
and a hat to dispose of it.
What neat houses
all the yards have!
As a pretty hand has
a pretty rope.
Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Monday 14 January 1660/61.
from turning into a particle of disbelief, so many of them, each one a universe where things pretend to be what they are only to spite themselves: milk in the jug never sweet, the cream always on the verge of curdling; a downspout refusing anything that might resemble water. Oh how miserable to maintain such a charade, the stream only doubling back on itself because it must disprove what some philosopher said about not being able to step in the same current twice. Keep me from the old shell game of anxiety, guessing which tin holds the crystal paperweight and which the red bean we will boil for supper. Instead, keep me in love with what’s unafraid to open: daisy heads struck dumb by cold, those few frail buds whose ears are tuned like mine to some voice alluringly out of season.
In response to Via Negativa: Delusions of an erasure poet....
In the morning we all went to church, and sat in the pew belonging to us, where a cold sermon of a young man that never had preached before. Here Commissioner Pett came with his wife and daughters, the eldest being his wife’s daughter is a very comely black woman. So to the Globe to dinner, and then with Commissioner Pett to his lodgings there (which he hath for the present while he is building the King’s yacht, which will be a pretty thing, and much beyond the Dutchman’s), and from thence with him and his wife and daughter-in-law by coach to Greenwich Church, where a good sermon, a fine church, and a great company of handsome women. After sermon to Deptford again; where, at the Commissioner’s and the Globe, we staid long. And so I to Mr. Davis’s to bed again. But no sooner in bed, but we had an alarm, and so we rose: and the Comptroller comes into the Yard to us; and seamen of all the ships present repair to us, and there we armed with every one a handspike, with which they were as fierce as could be. At last we hear that it was only five or six men that did ride through the guard in the town, without stopping to the guard that was there; and, some say, shot at them. But all being quiet there, we caused the seamen to go on board again: And so we all to bed (after I had sat awhile with Mr. Davis in his study, which is filled with good books and some very good song books) I likewise to bed.
I long for a black rose
in every hand,
fierce men that ride
without stopping,
a quiet study filled
with good books.
Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Sunday 13 January 1660/61.
In graduate school my poetry teachers would say, Stay clear of theory! Run away from Baudrillard, Foucault, Derrida— All that postmodern complexity, its dense linguistic curtains, its smoke and mirrors; those parables about the emptiness at the heart of the onion, the scintillating space in that final temple more alabaster than an egg or the Taj Mahal where nothing can live, not even love, not even poetry… But who was it said that once we understand we have nothing, then and only then can we approach poetry? And I was merely a girl from the highlands, a girl from a town on an old ivory map so far away in the hills and too too difficult to climb through limestone canyons to get to. So the friars at first simply said Hija de puta, there is no one there to count in our census, ergo it does not exist— Where they did not persist, others did. Look at our archives of poems in the shape of our enemies’ severed heads. Look at our feathered amulets, our chest plates studded with silence after silence, deconstructed into fearful significance.
In response to Via Negativa: Things to do with texts after Derrida.
With Colonel Slingsby and a friend of his, Major Waters (a deaf and most amorous melancholy gentleman, who is under a despayr in love, as the Colonel told me, which makes him bad company, though a most good- natured man), by water to Redriffe, and so on foot to Deptford (our servants by water), where we fell to choosing four captains to command the guards, and choosing the places where to keep them, and other things in order thereunto. We dined at the Globe, having our messenger with us to take care for us. Never till now did I see the great authority of my place, all the captains of the fleet coming cap in hand to us.
Having staid very late there talking with the Colonel, I went home with Mr. Davis, storekeeper (whose wife is ill and so I could not see her), and was there most prince-like lodged, with so much respect and honour that I was at a loss how to behave myself.
Waters deaf and most amorous
make bad company.
Water fell, choosing places to keep
with great authority.
Captains of the fleet
coming cap in hand
went home with a hose.
Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Saturday 12 January 1660/61.
Just as (we are told) there are no atheists in foxholes, so the erasure poet comes to believe that there are no truly prosaic passages in a passage of prose. You can only look at arrangements of words on a page for so long before you completely lose track of which are the expected sentiments, the set phrases. Strangeness affects them all. You look deeper: within words, and between words widely separated on the page. New possible poems spark with electricity, like Frankenstein’s monster just before full reanimation. But it’s a zero-sum game: for one poem to open, countless others must remain closed. Syntax, like time, only flows in one direction. Knowing this, you hesitate over the source text. The poems are parallel universes, each with their own laws. And as in physics, any pretense of the observer to a god-like standing above the observed phenomenon is impossible; to observe is to recognize, and to recognize is to implicate oneself in an inherently contingent origin. Perhaps the Daoists are right, and the only perfect art object is the uncarved block.
Office day. This day comes news, by letters from Portsmouth, that the Princess Henrietta is fallen sick of the meazles on board the London, after the Queen and she was under sail. And so was forced to come back again into Portsmouth harbour; and in their way, by negligence of the pilot, run upon the Horse sand. The Queen and she continue aboard, and do not intend to come on shore till she sees what will become of the young Princess. This news do make people think something indeed, that three of the Royal Family should fall sick of the same disease, one after another. This morning likewise, we had order to see guards set in all the King’s yards; and so we do appoint who and who should go to them. Sir Wm. Batten to Chatham, Colonel Slingsby and I to Deptford and Woolwich. Portsmouth being a garrison, needs none.
Dined at home, discontented that my wife do not go neater now she has two maids. After dinner comes in Kate Sterpin (whom we had not seen a great while) and her husband to see us, with whom I staid a while, and then to the office, and left them with my wife.
At night walked to Paul’s Churchyard, and bespoke some books against next week, and from thence to the Coffeehouse, where I met Captain Morrice, the upholster, who would fain have lent me a horse to-night to have rid with him upon the Cityguards, with the Lord Mayor, there being some new expectations of these rogues; but I refused by reason of my going out of town tomorrow. So home to bed.
Mouth of the queen,
mouth of the horse—
what will become of
the young disease?
Like a sling,
a mouth needs content.
After dinner
comes a husband to a wife,
night to the coffeehouse,
a horse to a rogue.
Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Friday 11 January 1660/61.
I couldn’t resist.
In childhood, often I confused words I knew only a little about for other words: for instance, overhearing my father on the phone conveying his sympathies to a friend who had lost a family member, I wondered why he kept bringing up that sweet-sticky milk I liked to smear like jam on my bread. Condense, condolence. In a way grief is sticky like that, and when you have opened the can it’s as if you have to keep going until you reach the bottom, until there is nothing left and your teaspoon hits metal and the sound lets you know there isn’t any more. So you rinse it at the sink, you put it away and teach yourself gradually the differences between guillotine and glutton, animate and anemone, windfall and waterfall.
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.