Via Negativa

July 7, 2025July 7, 2025 by Dave Bonta

Poetry Blog Digest 2025, Week 27

A personal selection of posts from the Poetry Blogging Network and beyond. Although I tend to quote my favorite bits, please do click through and read the whole posts. You can also browse the blog digest archive at Via Negativa or, if you’d like it in your inbox, subscribe on Substack (where the posts might be truncated by some email providers).

This week: singing bones, messages in bottles, the wind phone, the dark mist of America, and much more. Enjoy.

July 7, 2025 by Dave Bonta

Antiquarian

Up and to my office early, and there all the morning alone till dinner, and after dinner to my office again, and about 3 o’clock with my wife by water to Westminster, where I staid in the Hall while my wife went to see her father and mother, and she returning we by water home again, and by and by comes Mr. Cooper, so he and I to our mathematiques, and so supper and to bed.
My morning’s work at the office was to put the new books of my office into order, and writing on the backsides what books they be, and transcribing out of some old books some things into them.

to my ear alone
the moth comes

to be my new book
writing out old things

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Monday 7 July 1662.

July 6, 2025 by Dave Bonta

Ministry

(Lord’s day). Lay long in bed to-day with my wife merry and pleasant, and then rose and settled my accounts with my wife for housekeeping, and do see that my kitchen, besides wine, fire, candle, sope, and many other things, comes to about 30s. a week, or a little over.
To church, where Mr. Mills made a lazy sermon. So home to dinner, where my brother Tom dined with me, and so my wife and I to church again in the afternoon, and that done I walked to the Wardrobe and spent my time with Mr. Creed and Mr. Moore talking about business; so up to supper with my Lady, who tells me, with much trouble, that my Lady Castlemaine is still as great with the King, and that the King comes as often to her as ever he did, at which, God forgive me, I am well pleased.
It began to rain, and so I borrowed a hat and cloak of Mr. Moore and walked home, where I found Captain Ferrer with my wife, and after speaking a matter of an hour with him he went home and we all to bed.
Jack Cole, my old friend, found me out at the Wardrobe; and, among other things, he told me that certainly most of the chief ministers of London would fling up their livings; and that, soon or late, the issue thereof would be sad to the King and Court.

I keep my candle
where wartime comes

as often as god
forgive me rain

I borrow an oak
to be my wardrobe

among other thin
ministers of the living

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Sunday 6 July 1662.

July 6, 2025 by Dave Bonta

[haiku]

tunnel vision
the darkness returning
each of our words

re-blogged from Woodrat Photohaiku

July 6, 2025July 6, 2025 by Dave Bonta

Death Valley (2)

To my office all the morning, to get things ready against our sitting, and by and by we sat and did business all the morning, and at noon had Sir W. Pen, who I hate with all my heart for his base treacherous tricks, but yet I think it not policy to declare it yet, and his son William, to my house to dinner, where was also Mr. Creed and my cozen Harry Alcocke. I having some venison given me a day or two ago, and so I had a shoulder roasted, another baked, and the umbles baked in a pie, and all very well done. We were merry as I could be in that company, and the more because I would not seem otherwise to Sir W. Pen, he being within a day or two to go for Ireland.
After dinner he and his son went away, and Mr. Creed would, with all his rhetoric, have persuaded me to have gone to a play; and in good earnest I find my nature desirous to have gone, notwithstanding my promise and my business, to which I have lately kept myself so close, but I did refuse it, and I hope shall ever do so, and above all things it is considerable that my mind was never in my life in so good a condition of quiet as it has been since I have followed my business and seen myself to get greater and greater fitness in my employment, and honour every day more than other. So at my office all the afternoon, and then my mathematiques at night with Mr. Cooper, and so to supper and to bed.

all morning
in a baked land

with nature so close
and so considerable

my mind
was never quiet

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Saturday 5 July 1662, lightly edited from the first draft.

July 6, 2025July 6, 2025 by Luisa A. Igloria

Abide

river in November light between bare woods and mountain

When I no longer care 
about the world, let me 
sit on a rock perch where 
my hair can be  
                         combed by the wind.

When I no longer want to bind 
my breasts with cotton and drink 
from an orchard well, let me sleep 
in a room without clocks 
                         in the middle of a monsoon.

The days are full 
of horrors and lamentations,
nights with visions 
of banishment and exile with
                         no hope of return.

Yet deeper blue than the sky,
hydrangeas keep rewriting
a narrative of ordinary survival.
Their dry, petaled heads persist,
                         even in the absence of water.

July 5, 2025July 5, 2025 by Luisa A. Igloria

This Old House

Articles on home maintenance warn about breaks
in the plaster: how they may be a sign of something
more serious in the foundation, or that the soil 
underneath has shifted and softened through the years, 
or both. But it's simply the way things go as they 
get older and more worn. Chips in the stucco, 
scratches on once smooth sanded floors. When  
we moved in, this house was also already old. 
Having been vacant for some time, it was as if 
the pipes sighed awake from a long drought 
the first time we ran the showers and flushed 
the toilets. The realtor found a small nest 
of rodents in the crawl space, and called 
extermination services. We learned new words 
like soffit, fascia, and transom window; and also 
that the modest, side-gabled Cape Cod style dates 
back to the 1800s. From the floor outline in the apron-
sized dining room and a full window set into the wall 
behind the hutch, we can see some of the original 
bones of this house: how and where more rooms 
were added, even as closet space remained the same 
for times when people may have had a need for much 
less in their lives. In summertime, men in shorts 
and baseball caps knock on doors in the neighborhood, 
asking Do you have spiders, mosquitoes, ants, and 
are they a problem for you? We always turn them 
away. Sometimes, a tiny green grasshopper comes in. 
Sometimes, a cricket trills unseen in a corner. 
Moths are our favorite— we like to think they're 
visitations from our dead, gone so many years but there,
like a glimmer of something precious in the cracks.

July 4, 2025 by Dave Bonta

Physics (2)

Up by five o’clock, and after my journall put in order, to my office about my business, which I am resolved to follow, for every day I see what ground I get by it. By and by comes Mr. Cooper, mate of the Royall Charles, of whom I intend to learn mathematiques, and do begin with him to-day, he being a very able man, and no great matter, I suppose, will content him. After an hour’s being with him at arithmetique (my first attempt being to learn the multiplication-table); then we parted till to-morrow. And so to my business at my office again till noon, about which time Sir W. Warren did come to me about business, and did begin to instruct me in the nature of fine timber and deals, telling me the nature of every sort; and from that we fell to discourse of Sir W. Batten’s corruption and the people that he employs, and from one discourse to another of the kind. I was much pleased with his company, and so staid talking with him all alone at my office till 4 in the afternoon, without eating or drinking all day, and then parted, and I home to eat a bit, and so back again to my office; and toward the evening came Mr. Sheply, who is to go out of town to-morrow, and so he and I with much ado settled his accounts with my Lord, which, though they be true and honest, yet so obscure, that it vexes me to see in what manner they are kept. He being gone, and leave taken of him as of a man likely not to come to London again a great while, I eat a bit of bread and butter, and so to bed. This day I sent my brother Tom, at his request, my father’s old Bass Viall which he and I have kept so long, but I fear Tom will do little good at it.

solve for y
what ground comes to matter

I will learn
the multiplication of noon

instruct me in the nature of the nature
that we fell from

it is so obscure
that x like an old bass viol

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Friday 4 July 1662—a lightly edited version of my original attempt.

July 3, 2025July 3, 2025 by Luisa A. Igloria

Chosen Family

      Once, a fish slid its sinuous body 
into the sea's cloud cover; 
                              it was taken to task  
      for not appearing before the gods. For keeping 
its own counsel, 
                 it received a lashing of bones. 
      I feel a natural kinship with it, but also  
with the lizard 
                 skittering through a labyrinth 
      of landmines and guillotines. Kinship with 
the orange-blushed 
                    mountain shrike and its constant 
      alarm of krr-krr-krr, and with ghosts 
of innumerable histories thickening 
                                    the air 
      that we breathe— Lock eyes with any creature 
you meet: the current  
                      you feel is felt by them, 
      too. Some are more expert at shedding 
their skin when it no longer 
                             serves them.

July 3, 2025 by Dave Bonta

Parliamentarian

Up by four o’clock and to my office till 8 o’clock, writing over two copies of our contract with Sir W. Rider, &c., for 500 ton of hempe, which, because it is a secret, I have the trouble of 7 over as well as drawing.
Then home to dress myself, and so to the office, where another fray between Sir R. Ford and myself about his yarn, wherein I find the board to yield on my side, and was glad thereof, though troubled that the office should fall upon me of disobliging Sir Richard.
At noon we all by invitation dined at the Dolphin with the Officers of the Ordnance; where Sir W. Compton, Mr. O’Neale, and other great persons, were, and a very great dinner, but I drank as I still do but my allowance of wine.
After dinner, was brought to Sir W. Compton a gun to discharge seven times, the best of all devices that ever I saw, and very serviceable, and not a bawble; for it is much approved of, and many thereof made.
Thence to my office all the afternoon as long as I could see, about setting many businesses in order. In the evening came Mr. Lewis to me, and very ingeniously did enquire whether I ever did look into the business of the Chest at Chatham; and after my readiness to be informed did appear to him, he did produce a paper, wherein he stated the government of the Chest to me; and upon the whole did tell me how it hath ever been abused, and to this day is; and what a meritorious act it would be to look after it; which I am resolved to do, if God bless me; and do thank him very much for it.
So home, and after a turn or two upon the leads with my wife, who has lately had but little of my company, since I begun to follow my business, but is contented therewith since she sees how I spend my time, and so to bed.

a secret wing
should fall at noon

we allow a gun
to discharge seven times
approve the afternoon

the government of a hole
has little to see

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Thursday 3 July 1662.