Via Negativa

February 27, 2025February 27, 2025 by Luisa A. Igloria

This morning came Mr. Berkenshaw to me and in our discourse I, finding that he cries up his rules for most perfect (though I do grant them to be very good, and the best I believe that ever yet were made), and that I could not persuade him to grant wherein they were somewhat lame, we fell to angry words, so that in a pet he flung out of my chamber and I never stopped him, having intended to put him off today, whether this had happened or no, because I think I have all the rules that he hath to give. And so there remains nothing but practice now to do me good, and it is not for me to continue with him at 5l. per month.
So I settled to put all his rules in fair order in a book, which was my work all the morning till dinner. After dinner to the office till late at night, and so home to write by the post, and so to bed.

I am finding cries
that were made into words

and never happened
because there is
no air in a book

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Thursday 27 February 1661/62.

February 26, 2025February 27, 2025 by Luisa A. Igloria

Abecedarian on Ways I Would Rather Not Die

river in November light between bare woods and mountain

Adrift, at sea; in water higher than my chin, I'd
      break down because I never learned to swim.
Call me a wimp, but I get itchy looking at caterpillars; 
      don't think it's OK to be tattooed in hives.
Every time I think about dying, I pray: immediate and
      fast, please— not drawn out over months, years even. 
Get me the equivalent of a Concorde, London to New York; or
      half the time for sound to travel through a medium. 
Incomprehensible, but some have been impaled by falling icicles.  
      Jealousy's pinch, preceding fatal complication.
Lightning victim, hair on fire beside a gutted tree.   
      Midway through a trip, falling off a cliff from 
nonsense ideas for selfies. (Stand in front of a train?
      Or have a freak accident, slipping and falling on
pans of upturned knives in an open dishwasher?) 
      Quietly napping on the couch, then have a meteorite  
slam through the roof and hit you. All manner of
      turbulence breaking open in our lives,
undoing our sense of safety. I'd rather not be choked by
      vines or swallowed whole by a reticulated python,
walloped then skewered by a swordfish. I'd rather not be
      xenophobically targeted, nor sucked into the   
yaw of a meat grinder. I'd rather not choke on a mouthful of 
      zabaglione, its custardy froth laced with Marsala.

February 26, 2025February 27, 2025 by Dave Bonta

Thaw

a chaos of paths
stops me in my tracks

tumbleweed AKA windwitch
stuck in the icy crust

while moss and lichen
nearby are melting free

touseled but upright
with gray cups upraised

a crushed plastic water bottle
rests like a saint in its icy crypt

the ground shakes
from a coal train

one piece of passing graffiti says
in gothic letters GET OUT

February 26, 2025February 26, 2025 by Dave Bonta

Misplaced

Mr. Berkenshaw with me all the morning composing of musique to “This cursed jealousy, what is it,” a song of Sir W. Davenant’s.
After dinner I went to my Bookseller’s, W. Joyce’s, and several other places to pay my debts and do business, I being resolved to cast up my accounts within a day or two, for I fear I have run out too far.
In coming home I met with a face I knew and challenged him, thinking it had been one of the Theatre musicians, and did enquire for a song of him, but finding it a mistake, and that it was a gentleman that comes sometimes to the office, I was much ashamed, but made a pretty good excuse that I took him for a gentleman of Gray’s Inn who sings well, and so parted. Home for all night and set things in order and so to bed.

in my book
another place

I fear I have
too far a face

a mistake comes
sometimes to sing

a part for all
night things

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Wednesday 26 February 1661/62.

February 25, 2025February 25, 2025 by Luisa A. Igloria

Omega

The first time I saw it was on the stained 
ivory face of my father's Seamaster De Ville— 

like half a miniature burnished circle 
pressing down into a sumo squat— before 

I learned Omega was the last letter of 
the Greek alphabet; the symbol for the end.

It was a hand-me-down, a gift from a wealthy 
cousin who smoked cigars, drove sports cars 

and sent his children to schools in Europe 
or America. In Revelation, God calls himself 

the Alpha and the Omega. This means, he 
who is and was and who is yet to come; 

in other words, infinity or the eternal.  
My father cherished the watch, perhaps  

among the most expensive personal items he'd ever 
come to own. When it stopped or ran fast or slow, 

he took it to the Indian shopkeeper on Session
Road, who knew about such things. I'm not sure,

but it must have been buried with him when 
he died. My father was not infinite or eternal. 

Clear as a timepiece wrapped around my wrist, only 
his memory ticks in my mind with no beginning or end.

February 25, 2025 by Dave Bonta

Bloviation

All the morning at the office. At noon with Mr. Moore to the Coffee-house, where among other things the great talk was of the effects of this late great wind; and I heard one say that he had five great trees standing together blown down; and, beginning to lop them, one of them, as soon as the lops were cut off, did, by the weight of the root, rise again and fasten. We have letters from the forest of Deane, that above 1000 Oakes and as many beeches are blown down in one walk there. And letters from my father tell me of 20l. hurt done to us at Brampton.
This day in the news-book I find that my Lord Buckhurst and his fellows have printed their case as they did give it in upon examination to a justice of Peace, wherein they make themselves a very good tale that they were in pursuit of thieves, and that they took this man for one of them, and so killed him; and that he himself confessed it was the first time of his robbing; and that he did pay dearly for it, for he was a dead man. But I doubt things will be proved otherwise, as they say.
Home to dinner, and by and by comes Mr. Hunt and his wife to see us and staid a good, while with us. Then parted, and I to my study in the office. The first time since the alteracon that I have begun to do business myself there, and I think I shall be well pleased with it.
At night home to supper and to bed.

at the coffee house
talk is a great wind

trees blow down
and rise again

a forest of news where thieves
rob us of time

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Tuesday 25 February 1661/62.

February 24, 2025February 24, 2025 by Luisa A. Igloria

I Give You My Word

Everyone has something to say. 
While this is true, not everything said
makes it into the news or the archive. 

All night, the noisy congress of frogs; 
the screeching of possums and owls. Who 
conducts their decorum, who launches 

a 24-hour filibuster? Where does it come from, 
the audacity to address history, to say wait 
a minute, listen to me? I'll say I'm tired 

of endlessly rolling the wheels of commerce,
one of millions of hamsters unfairly predicted
to die before tasting their reward. I'm afraid 

to look too closely at pickup trucks on the road 
flying flags with a giant blue X on a field of red. 
Part of you occasionally doesn't know how to feel 

about never having learned to handle a gun. But you
still believe in the kind of hope that wants to be 
done with war. Our parents wore their shoes until

their soles came undone. They studied books, and also 
believed certain things are more durable than weapons 
or words: what we mean when we say I give you my word.

February 24, 2025February 25, 2025 by Dave Bonta

Poetry Blog Digest 2025, Week 8

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: milk-blue light, a bag of grief, demonic possession, the promise of spring, and more. Enjoy.

February 24, 2025 by Dave Bonta

Late winter

Long with Mr. Berkenshaw in the morning at my musique practice; finishing my song of “Gaze not on Swans,” in two parts, which pleases me well, and I did give him 5l. for this month or five weeks that he hath taught me, which is a great deal of money and troubled me to part with it. Thence to the Paynter’s, and set again for my picture in little, and thence over the water to Southwark to Mr. Berkenshaw’s house, and there sat with him all the afternoon, he showing me his great card of the body of musique, which he cries up for a rare thing, and I do believe it cost much pains, but is not so useful as he would have it. Then we sat down and set “Nulla, nulla sit formido,” and he has set it very finely. So home and to supper, and then called Will up, and chid him before my wife for refusing to go to church with the maids yesterday, and telling his mistress that he would not be made a slave of, which vexes me. So to bed.

the music of swans
over the house

and he with no wing
his great body in pain
refusing to go

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Monday 24 February 1661/62.