Purveyors of fine poetry since 2003.
They cradle the same ball
of string, passing it from hand to hand,
knotting and unknotting as if smoothness
were an insult to the complications of this life.
Their movements are impossible to intercept,
or so the myth goes. But don't you wonder
if they ever tire of thinking up the next
tangle, or where to snip the thread
short, what end to dip in tallow
for the slower burn?
This morning, after order given to my workmen, my wife and I and Mr. Creed took coach, and in Fishstreet took up Mr. Hater and his wife, who through her mask seemed at first to be an old woman, but afterwards I found her to be a very pretty modest black woman.
We got a small bait at Leatherhead, and so to Godlyman, where we lay all night, and were very merry, having this day no other extraordinary rencontre, but my hat falling off my head at Newington into the water, by which it was spoiled, and I ashamed of it.
I am sorry that I am not at London, to be at Hide-parke to-morrow, among the great gallants and ladies, which will be very fine.
in my hate mask
I found a small god
where night is day
a falling wing
to hide among the ants
Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Tuesday 30 April 1661.
Light falls on objects in my periphery;
when it hits the retina in the back of the eye,
photoreceptors transform it into electrical signals
conveyed to the brain, where they reassemble
as images: the fig tree's leaves in late afternoon,
pollen coating every plank on the deck;
container ships in the distance, like Lego blocks
crossing the river. How do I know this,
as well as everything else I say I know? Not
just because consciousness isolates how
all these things take up space in the mind, but also
because I feel the sweat pool in the small
of my back, smell salt in the wind, touch the gradually
purpling plush on the cheeks of fruit.
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: words with friends, a loving attendance on the world, histories of brokenness and violence, lithium wasps, the Mouth of Hell volcano, and much more. Enjoy.
Continue reading “Poetry Blog Digest 2024, Week 17”
Up and with my father towards my house, and by the way met with Lieut. Lambert, and with him to the Dolphin in Tower Street and drank our morning draught, he being much troubled about his being offered a fourth rate ship to be Lieutenant of her now he has been two years Lieutenant in a first rate.
So to the office, where it is determined that I should go to-morrow to Portsmouth.
So I went out of the office to Whitehall presently, and there spoke with Sir W. Pen and Sir George Carteret and had their advice as to my going, and so back again home, where I directed Mr. Hater what to do in order to our going to-morrow, and so back again by coach to Whitehall and there eat something in the buttery at my Lord’s with John Goods and Ned Osgood.
And so home again, and gave order to my workmen what to do in my absence.
At night to Sir W. Batten’s, and by his and Sir W. Pen’s persuasion I sent for my wife from my father’s, who came to us to Mrs. Turner’s, where we were all at a collacion to-night till twelve o’clock, there being a gentlewoman there that did play well and sang well to the Harpsicon, and very merry we were.
So home and to bed, where my wife had not lain a great while.
at war with the morning
I bled red years in the mine
out of the present
going back and back
in my absence the clock
sang to my wife
Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Monday 29 April 1661.
Only one letter changes immunity
to impunity. Even if you were
the daughter of immortals,
you could still be abducted to
the underworld, where you'll be
forced to share your uncle's bed.
Some call this violence or
a trickery; others call it fate.
Meanwhile, aboveground, hillsides
thicken with drooping Galanthus flowers.
Meanwhile, your mother cycles
between surrender and despair,
,
despair and surrender. And look
at Botticelli's Primavera, where,
in the orange grove, the zephyr is also
bent on possessing the nymph. Flowers
and vines are falling from her mouth.
It's as though now, winter will never leave.
(Lord’s day). In the morning to my father’s, where I dined, and in the afternoon to their church, where come Mrs. Turner and Mrs. Edward Pepys, and several other ladies, and so I went out of the pew into another. And after sermon home with them, and there staid a while and talked with them and was sent for to my father’s, where my cozen Angier and his wife, of Cambridge, to whom I went, and was glad to see them, and sent for wine for them, and they supped with my father. After supper my father told me of an odd passage the other night in bed between my mother and him, and she would not let him come to bed to her out of jealousy of him and an ugly wench that lived there lately, the most ill-favoured slut that ever I saw in my life, which I was ashamed to hear that my mother should be become such a fool, and my father bid me to take notice of it to my mother, and to make peace between him and her. All which do trouble me very much.
So to bed to my wife.
fathers turn
into a sermon
with wine after supper
an ugly red
Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Sunday 28 April 1661.
A hundred is usually the highest possible
score on an exam. Pliny the Elder was
supposed to be the first person in recorded
history to reach a hundred. It is the age
to which my mother aspired to live—a hundred
flickering candles on a pink and white iced cake,
a hundred pink roses brought to her room
at the care home by friends who still remembered
—except she kicked the can three months shy
of her ninety-third. In the village of Ogimi,
north of Okinawa, most of the population are
centenarians. They eat a diet rich in fish and fresh
fruit and vegetables, and gather to play cards
or cricket. They put up a marker which reads
At the age of 80, I’m still a child. When God
comes to call me at 90, I tell him to wait until
I turn 100. I don't think I will want to live a century,
which is a long time. In Tagalog, one word for century
is síglo, quite directly related to the Spanish síglo,
since Spain colonized the Philippines for nearly
four hundred years—an even longer time.
If everyone I love passes on ahead of me,
I know how gutted I'd be. Perhaps this is also
very secular— a feeling related to worldly things,
things that are temporal and bound to perish.
Pliny the Elder said, The only certainty is
that nothing is certain, though in his day
(as though they could be certain), emperors
and historians named a length of time roughly
equivalent to the potential lifetime of a person,
or the time allotted to a people or civilization,
a saeculum. When all people who lived
at the founding of an empire finally died,
the start of a new saeculum could be
declared. It seems unlikely it would take
only a hundred years to wipe out everything,
and then start as if from scratch. But a hundred
seems a nice, solid number: one confident
downstroke, followed by two perfect circles.
In the morning to my Lord’s, and there dined with my Lady, and after dinner with Mr. Creed and Captain Ferrers to the Theatre to see “The Chances,” and after that to the Cock alehouse, where we had a harp and viallin played to us, and so home by coach to Sir W. Batten’s, who seems so inquisitive when my house will be made an end of that I am troubled to go thither. So home with some trouble in my mind about it.
to the theater to see
a harp and violin
play us
who seem so mad
a hit
in my mind
Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Saturday 27 April 1661.
The man who cuts our grass every two weeks likes to stop
and chat in the middle of mowing. This week, he pushed
his headphones down to his neck because he wanted to talk
about the book he's reading and can't seem to put down:
histories of wartime in the Pacific, including the Japanese
occupation of my country. He's stupefied by the record
of atrocity after atrocity: young girls herded off to become
comfort women, babies shishkebobed by bayonets for being
in the way of advance. When we say back then, supposedly
we mean golden years we might look at with present-day
nostalgia. But histories of brokenness and violence keep
coming back, weeds wanting to overtake any good
growth. Yesterday, a man stood in a court of law and said
a president, just because he was president, could assasinate
his political rival and be immune from prosecution.
And yesterday, there was a moment when I could not
seem to tell anymore where the unassailable sadness
of this world and my personal sorrows begin,
and where they end. But you gave me
a kiss of such simple tenderness it made me weep.
