Via Negativa

May 7, 2026May 7, 2026 by Luisa A. Igloria

Up betimes and to my office a good while at my new rulers, then to business, and towards noon to the Exchange with Creed, where we met with Sir J. Minnes coming in his coach from Westminster, who tells us, in great heat, that, by God, the Parliament will make mad work; that they will render all men incapable of any military or civil employment that have borne arms in the late troubles against the King, excepting some persons; which, if it be so, as I hope it is not, will give great cause of discontent, and I doubt will have but bad effects.
I left them at the Exchange and walked to Paul’s Churchyard to look upon a book or two, and so back, and thence to the Trinity House, and there dined, where, among other discourse worth hearing among the old seamen, they tell us that they have catched often in Greenland in fishing whales with the iron grapnells that had formerly been struck into their bodies covered over with fat; that they have had eleven hogsheads of oyle out of the tongue of a whale.
Thence after dinner home to my office, and there busy till the evening. Then home and to supper, and while at supper comes Mr. Pembleton, and after supper we up to our dancing room and there danced three or four country dances, and after that a practice of my coranto I began with him the other day, and I begin to think that I shall be able to do something at it in time. Late and merry at it, and so weary to bed.

a war on god will render
any great whale
into oil

out of the tongue of a whale
comes our country
after all

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Wednesday 6 May 1663.

May 6, 2026May 6, 2026 by Luisa A. Igloria

Life Study

river in November light between bare woods and mountain

As if I needed to remember something, 
   I find a dead bird on the patio steps. Fledgling, 
       breast gouged open either by feral cat or raccoon, 
heart exposed and the musculature around it— 
   like shreds of linen I saw someone tear from an old 
       shirt, for sticking on a field of glue and repurposing 
as collage. The noonday sun has not yet melted 
   its plush away. But to not have even gained more
       knowledge of its powers, or the poignant tang
of a world just waking to spring, before a horde of flies 
   and wasps hover around its disintegrating proteins?
       I could translate all this into words like hunger
or gift, witness or mercy. But I choose not to.  
   I consider the breath that unraveled so quickly, how 
       the future briefly arrived, without fanfare or song.

May 5, 2026 by Dave Bonta

Jihadi

Up betimes and to my office, and there busy all the morning, among other things walked a good while up and down with Sir J. Minnes, he telling many old stories of the Navy, and of the state of the Navy at the beginning of the late troubles, and I am troubled at my heart to think, and shall hereafter cease to wonder, at the bad success of the King’s cause, when such a knave as he (if it be true what he says) had the whole management of the fleet, and the design of putting out of my Lord Warwick, and carrying the fleet to the King, wherein he failed most fatally to the King’s ruin.
Dined at home, and after dinner up to try my dance, and so to the office again, where we sat all the afternoon. In the evening Deane of Woolwich went home with me and showed me the use of a little sliding ruler, less than that I bought the other day, which is the same with that, but more portable; however I did not seem to understand or even to have seen anything of it before, but I find him an ingenious fellow, and a good servant in his place to the King.
Thence to my office busy writing letters, and then came Sir W. Warren, staying for a letter in his business by the post, and while that was writing he and I talked about merchandise, trade, and getting of money. I made it my business to enquire what way there is for a man bred like me to come to understand anything of trade. He did most discretely answer me in all things, shewing me the danger for me to meddle either in ships or merchandise of any sort or common stocks, but what I have to keep at interest, which is a good, quiett, and easy profit, and once in a little while something offers that with ready money you may make use of money to good profit. Wherein I concur much with him, and parted late with great pleasure and content in his discourse, and so home to supper and to bed. It has been this afternoon very hot and this evening also, and about 11 at night going to bed it fell a-thundering and lightening, the greatest flashes enlightening the whole body of the yard, that ever I saw in my life.

in the old stories
a king’s true war

fatal to the dance
of a little ruler

is to understand his place
and stay out of it

like danger enlightening
the whole body

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Tuesday 5 May 1663.

May 5, 2026May 5, 2026 by Luisa A. Igloria

Two Sides

I just learned about bilateral
tapping— crossed arms, fingers
drumming a light rhythm on each

shoulder. My therapist says this
is a way to signal both hemispheres
of the brain to lower the volume

on the frantic, on the panic, as if
anxiety is a kind of bad engineering
(which I guess it is) that's set off

smoke alarms in the chest. This is
also because the mind can be in many
places at once: red lights at different

intersections, the runway shimmering,
the indeterminate depth of the drop at 
its end. All these years my first impulse 

was to run from any building ripple, any 
hint of an undertow. In my head I was 
always rehearsing evacuation routes, 

considering where to pile sandbags. This 
exercise is supposed to remind me what I keep 
forgetting: I am right here, I am not drowning. 

A wave rises, breaks, scatters. I try 
to imagine a different scenario— a cellist 
on the beach, his wire-rimmed spectacles 

catching the fading light, his coat-
tails in the foam. His hand, bowing long, 
sure notes into the evening. Music almost 

thick enough to wade through. A crowd 
of pelicans tilting their heads to one side, 
listening not for danger but for beauty.

May 5, 2026 by Dave Bonta

Bare necessities

Up betimes and to setting my Brampton papers in order and looking over my wardrobe against summer, and laying things in order to send to my brother to alter. By and by took boat intending to have gone down to Woolwich, but seeing I could not get back time enough to dinner, I returned and home. Whither by and by the dancing-master came, whom standing by, seeing him instructing my wife, when he had done with her, he would needs have me try the steps of a coranto, and what with his desire and my wife’s importunity, I did begin, and then was obliged to give him entry-money 10s., and am become his scholler. The truth is, I think it a thing very useful for a gentleman, and sometimes I may have occasion of using it, and though it cost me what I am heartily sorry it should, besides that I must by my oath give half as much more to the poor, yet I am resolved to get it up some other way, and then it will not be above a month or two in a year. So though it be against my stomach yet I will try it a little while; if I see it comes to any great inconvenience or charge I will fling it off.
After I had begun with the steps of half a coranto, which I think I shall learn well enough, he went away, and we to dinner.
And by and by out by coach, and set my wife down at my Lord Crew’s, going to see my Lady Jem. Montagu, who is lately come to town, and I to St. James’s; where Mr. Coventry, Sir W. Pen and I staid a good while for the Duke’s coming in, but not coming, we walked to White Hall; and meeting the King, we followed him into the Park, where Mr. Coventry and he talked of building a new yacht, which the King is resolved to have built out of his privy purse, he having some contrivance of his own. The talk being done, we fell off to White Hall, leaving the King in the Park, and going back, met the Duke going towards St. James’s to meet us. So he turned back again, and to his closett at White Hall; and there, my Lord Sandwich present, we did our weekly errand, and so broke up; and I down into the garden with my Lord Sandwich (after we had sat an hour at the Tangier Committee); and after talking largely of his own businesses, we begun to talk how matters are at Court: and though he did not flatly tell me any such thing, yet I do suspect that all is not kind between the King and the Duke, and that the King’s fondness to the little Duke do occasion it; and it may be that there is some fear of his being made heir to the Crown. But this my Lord did not tell me, but is my guess only; and that my Lord Chancellor is without doubt falling past hopes. He being gone to Chelsey by coach I to his lodgings, where my wife staid for me, and she from thence to see Mrs. Pierce and called me at Whitehall stairs (where I went before by land to know whether there was any play at Court to-night) and there being none she and I to Mr. Creed to the Exchange, where she bought something, and from thence by water to White Fryars, and wife to see Mrs. Turner, and then came to me at my brother’s, where I did give him order about my summer clothes, and so home by coach, and after supper to bed to my wife, with whom I have not lain since I used to lie with my father till to-night.

time to summer
time to turn on

or have half off
in an oven of white sand

a garden large as a guess
where water used to lie

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Monday 4 May 1663.

May 4, 2026May 4, 2026 by Luisa A. Igloria

The Color of Longing

The color of my longing is mineral: obsidian 
sheen in the time it takes for language to surface,

the compass points of intention hardening 
in the sun. I am saturated with the intensity 

of its darkness. Such depth renders 
cave-like spaces inside me— I turn them 

into grottoes, gathering bits of wreckage 
and lighting them as fires, so the blue 

of my longing can burn. Imagine a ship 
laden with memory and salt, setting out 

with full sails of intention, then 
drifting in circles from the sheer 

magnitude of desire— the kind of ocean 
that keeps widening even when nothing moves. 

But this too is abundance: so much blue, 
a whole sky seems to have fallen into the water.

May 4, 2026May 4, 2026 by Dave Bonta

Poetry Blog Digest 2026, Week 18

A personal selection of posts from around the Anglophone blogosphere, including Substack, with a commitment to following a somewhat haphazardly chosen selection of poets, poetry lovers, literary critics and publishers over time. 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: fists of will-be-blooms, a delicate crepuscular pinky grey, parrots nesting in the rain tree, the creeping-charlie’s faultless blue, and much more. Enjoy.

May 4, 2026 by Dave Bonta

Reconfiguration

(Lord’s day). Up before 5 o’clock and alone at setting my Brampton papers to rights according to my father’s and my computation and resolution the other day to my good content, I finding that there will be clear saved to us 50l. per annum, only a debt of it may be 100l.
So made myself ready and to church, where Sir W. Pen showed me the young lady which young Dawes, that sits in the new corner-pew in the church, hath stole away from Sir Andrew Rickard, her guardian, worth 1000l. per annum present, good land, and some money, and a very well-bred and handsome lady: he, I doubt, but a simple fellow. However, he got this good luck to get her, which methinks I could envy him with all my heart. Home to dinner with my wife, who not being very well did not dress herself but staid at home all day, and so I to church in the afternoon and so home again, and up to teach Ashwell the grounds of time and other things on the tryangle, and made her take out a Psalm very well, she having a good ear and hand. And so a while to my office, and then home to supper and prayers, to bed, my wife and I having a little falling out because I would not leave my discourse below with her and Ashwell to go up and talk with her alone upon something she has to say. She reproached me but I had rather talk with any body than her, by which I find I think she is jealous of my freedom with Ashwell, which I must avoid giving occasion of.

on paper I find a new
and simple heart

with my home ground
having a good ear

having a falling body
find it well

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Sunday 3 May 1663.

May 3, 2026May 3, 2026 by Luisa A. Igloria

Life-writing, with Crows

Crows land with a thud on the eave
above the front step, in view just outside 
my writing window. I keep still so I can watch 

feathers like rain shedders of glossy black, 
before they shake their shoulders and fly
off again. Last night at the café, 

our friend the linguistics professor 
now retired since she turned 77, told us 
she'd started on her memoirs: hard going 

sometimes. I can imagine it might be,
wading back into the currents of a life 
after congratulating yourself on heaving

back to land, after the treacherous 
parts. Dates are hard to remember, names 
come back to you in the shower, then fade 

somewhere in the folds of towels. 
That kind of life-writing isn't just 
bookkeeping. If I write quickly, 

perhaps the page will snag what I want 
to keep, but also what I want to avoid. 
This body wants to rest, stop 

rationing energy and money 
so they don't run out, stop running 
to pull back those it loves from 

the brink. But if I don't move, 
will the eddies settle into calm? 
Something startles the bird— a shadow 

larger than itself, human noise 
in the street— and tips it 
back out into the sky.