Category: Poems & poem-like things

Original poetry, translations and videopoems by the authors of this blog. (See Poets and poetry for criticism, etc.)

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Materialist

Office day, and my wife being gone out to buy some household stuff, I dined all alone, and after dinner to Westminster, in my way meeting Mr. Moore coming to me, who went back again with me calling at several places about business, at my father’s about gilded leather for my dining room, at Mr. Crew’s about money, at my Lord’s about the same, but meeting not Mr. Sheply there I went home by water, and Mr. Moore with me, who staid and supped with me till almost 9 at night. We love one another’s discourse so that we cannot part when we do meet.
He tells me that the profit of the Privy Seal is much fallen, for which I am very sorry. He gone and I to bed.

My stuff all alone
and calling me,
I went home.
We love one another.
We cannot part.


Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Monday 8 October 1660.

Posted on by Luisa A. Igloria

Smoke

This entry is part 9 of 28 in the series Morning Porch Poems: Autumn 2013

That trick we learned in late
childhood from a dare or taunt: to pass

a finger quickly across a spurt of flame,
lighter uncapped or taper lit— Enough

to feel the singe but not the burn. Next,
thin parchment rolled and tamped and passed

from hand to hand, communal draught
of dry ash, duff inhaled: one of us said,

It’s just like inhaling paper! —some kind
of picturesque notion in her head of how the leaf

now lived or moved inside, its spirit curling
around our heads like wreath or wraith,

bequeathing secret visions to new
acolytes, sophisticates.

 

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Preacher

(Lord’s day). To White Hall on foot, calling at my father’s to change my long black cloak for a short one (long cloaks being now quite out); but he being gone to church, I could not get one, and therefore I proceeded on and came to my Lord before he went to chapel and so went with him, where I heard Dr. Spurstow preach before the King a poor dry sermon; but a very good anthem of Captn. Cooke’s afterwards.
Going out of chapel I met with Jack Cole, my old friend (whom I had not seen a great while before), and have promised to renew acquaintance in London together. To my Lord’s and dined with him; he all dinner time talking French to me, and telling me the story how the Duke of York hath got my Lord Chancellor’s daughter with child, and that she, do lay it to him, and that for certain he did promise her marriage, and had signed it with his blood, but that he by stealth had got the paper out of her cabinet. And that the King would have him to marry her, but that he will not. So that the thing is very bad for the Duke, and them all; but my Lord do make light of it, as a thing that he believes is not a new thing for the Duke to do abroad. Discoursing concerning what if the Duke should marry her, my Lord told me that among his father’s many old sayings that he had wrote in a book of his, this is one—that he that do get a wench with child and marry her afterwards is as if a man should shit in his hat and then clap it on his head.
I perceive my Lord is grown a man very indifferent in all matters of religion, and so makes nothing of these things.
After dinner to the Abbey, where I heard them read the church- service, but very ridiculously, that indeed I do not in my mind like it at all. A poor cold sermon of Dr. Lamb’s, one of the prebends, in his habit, came afterwards, and so all ended, and by my troth a pitiful sorry devotion that these men pay.
So walked home by land, and before supper I read part of the Marian persecution in Mr. Fuller. So to supper, prayers, and to bed.

I preach a dry sermon:
how the Lord did promise with his blood
to marry the light.
I believe not.
What if the Lord told me an old saying?
A man should shit in his hat
and make nothing of the mind?
A pitiful devotion.


Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Sunday 7 October 1660.

Posted on by Luisa A. Igloria

Where forests fill in

as overgrowth and cover, some land
must have had to pay: villages razed

to the ground by war or conquest,
reduced to ciphers that won’t show
up on maps, much less in history

books— What persists is
what hasn’t been killed off yet
by famine, epidemic, or blight:

maize, perhaps; or the potato,
proliferating in more than a hundred
varieties underground.

And that myth of the forest primeval,
that paradise drenched in sun,
free of disease, with no hint

of even a little ice age
looming on the horizon? Stories
we’ve told ourselves to make it easier

to go to bed at night, to cull
from the pod the cotton used to fill
bales, pillows, eiderdowns; to justify

boat-loads of bodies forced
from some other shore—
Bargained for, numbered,

sold; tempered like tools
and set to work, indentured
in the ancient fields.

 

In response to Via Negativa: By-Catch.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

By-Catch

All this morning Col. Slingsby and I at the office getting a catch ready for the Prince de Ligne to carry his things away to-day, who is now going home again.
About noon comes my cozen H. Alcock, for whom I wrote a letter for my Lord to sign to my Lord Broghill for some preferment in Ireland, whither he is now a-going.
After him comes Mr. Creed, who brought me some books from Holland with him, well bound and good books, which I thought he did intend to give me, but I found that I must pay him.
He dined with me at my house, and from thence to Whitehall together, where I was to give my Lord an account of the stations and victualls of the fleet in order to the choosing of a fleet fit for him to take to sea, to bring over the Queen, but my Lord not coming in before 9 at night I staid no longer for him, but went back again home and so to bed.

All this by-catch to carry away.

Who is going to sign for it? Who?

Some land must pay.

I count the stations of the sea.


Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Saturday 6 October 1660.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Night Vision

Office day; dined at home, and all the afternoon at home to see my painters make an end of their work, which they did to-day to my content, and I am in great joy to see my house likely once again to be clean. At night to bed.

I dine
on paint
in great joy

to see
once again
at night.


Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Friday 5 October 1660.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Luck (videopoem)

This entry is part 8 of 34 in the series Breakdown: The Banjo Poems

I broke the mold a bit with this one — the first videopoem I’ve made in the slideshow or kinestasis style, which I’ve generally avoided in part because I don’t have the software tools to make it look like anything more than the low-rent copy and paste job that it is. But I’m excited about it anyway, because the text gave me an excuse to explore the rich visual legacy of a chapter in American women’s history I’ve just been learning about: the elevation of banjos into a symbol of (white) women’s social, political and sexual liberation beginning in the late 19th century. I’m indebted to the Penn State Press exhibition catalogue Picturing the Banjo, edited by Leo G. Matzow — especially the essay by Sarah Burns, “Whiteface: Art, Women, and the Banjo in Late-Nineteenth Century America” — for cluing me in about this. Some of the images that were most instrumental in creating this new market for banjos are in the video, including Mary Cassatt’s painting The Banjo Lesson and Frances Benjamin Johnston’s photograph of the Washington DC socialite Miss Apperson playing banjo beside a statue of Flora (a more traditionally Victorian representation of femininity). I had nary an inkling of all this when I wrote the poem back in 2010, so I’m pleased that it managed to evoke an interesting old meme despite the author’s appalling ignorance of it at the time of composition: “luck” indeed! Thanks to Steve Sherrill for loaning me the book.

This is the first I’ve actually used images of banjos or banjoists in this videopoetry series. I’m sure it won’t be the last, but I’ve been avoiding it just because it seemed like the obvious thing to do. (Not that including banjo music in the soundtrack is any less obvious.) In this case, it seemed worthwhile to use such images to suggest a historical dimension that otherwise didn’t make it into the poem, except possibly for the line about looking in the rear-view mirror. At some point, in other videos, I imagine I’ll have to deal with the more stereotypical, racist and classist images of banjo players as well. There’s really no avoiding them; they’re part of our cultural legacy whether we like it or not.

The soundtrack this time comes from my cousin Tony Bonta and his Towson, Maryland-based Bald Mountain Band. He extracted the vocal track from a short number they do called “Jenny Got Naked at a Party in 1989” and gave me carte blanche to use the instrumental version however I wanted. You can listen to the original version, which also happens to be spoken-word, on the band’s page at Reverbnation. Also, audiophile listeners may notice a dramatic improvement over the three previous videos in the quality of my reading here. That’s due to the fact that I got my old Zoom H2 microphone working again, thanks to persistent encouragement from Rachel, who used to work in radio and is sensitive to such differences. Eventually I suppose I’ll redo the other three videos with new voice recordings, but for now it’s more fun to work on new videopoems, which I guess I’ll keep doing until I run out of steam or out of banjo poems, whichever comes first.

You can watch all the banjo poetry videos I’ve made so far at their dedicated page on Vimeo. And of course if you haven’t ordered a copy of the print collection yet, visit the publisher’s website.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Force of Habit

This morning I was busy looking over papers at the office all alone, and being visited by Lieut. Lambert of the Charles (to whom I was formerly much beholden), I took him along with me to a little alehouse hard by our office, whither my cozen Thomas Pepys the turner had sent for me to show me two gentlemen that had a great desire to be known to me, one his name is Pepys, of our family, but one that I never heard of before, and the other a younger son of Sir Tho. Bendishes, and so we all called cozens.
After sitting awhile and drinking, my two new cozens, myself, and Lieut. Lambert went by water to Whitehall, and from thence I and Lieut. Lambert to Westminster Abbey, where we saw Dr. Frewen translated to the Archbishoprick of York.
Here I saw the Bishops of Winchester, Bangor, Rochester, Bath and Wells, and Salisbury, all in their habits, in King Henry Seventh’s chappell. But, Lord! at their going out, how people did most of them look upon them as strange creatures, and few with any kind of love or respect.
From thence we two to my Lord’s, where we took Mr. Sheply and Wm. Howe to the Raindeer, and had some oysters, which were very good, the first I have eat this year. So back to my Lord’s to dinner, and after dinner Lieut. Lambert and I did look upon my Lord’s model, and he told me many things in a ship that I desired to understand.
From thence by water I (leaving Lieut. Lambert at Blackfriars) went home, and there by promise met with Robert Shaw and Jack Spicer, who came to see me, and by the way I met upon Tower Hill with Mr. Pierce the surgeon and his wife, and took them home and did give them good wine, ale, and anchovies, and staid them till night, and so adieu.
Then to look upon my painters that are now at work in my house. At night to bed.

How to know all my habits?
Strange creatures
with a kind of love.
Oysters, which eat to understand:
water is a spice,
and the surgeon and his wife
work in my bed.


Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Thursday 4 October 1660.