Via Negativa

October 28, 2024October 28, 2024 by Dave Bonta

Poetry Blog Digest 2024, Week 43

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: inhabiting dissonance, time’s ragged lace, the museum of a life, the sexiness of grammar, and much more. Enjoy.

October 28, 2024 by Dave Bonta

Rite of consecration

At the office all the morning, and dined at home, and so to Paul’s Churchyard to Hunt’s, and there found my Theorbo done, which pleases me very well, and costs me 26s. to the altering. But now he tells me it is as good a lute as any is in England, and is worth well 10l. Hither I sent for Captain Ferrers to me, who comes with a friend of his, and they and I to the Theatre, and there saw “Argalus and Parthenia,” where a woman acted Parthenia, and came afterwards on the stage in men’s clothes, and had the best legs that ever I saw, and I was very well pleased with it. Thence to the Ringo alehouse, and thither sent for a belt-maker, and bought of him a handsome belt for second mourning, which cost me 24s., and is very neat.

ice at church
her one well

to heal the heat
in her maker

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Monday 28 October 1661.

October 28, 2024October 28, 2024 by Luisa A. Igloria

Things that are Hard to Forget

river in November light between bare woods and mountain

You wanted to forget what came before,
        and for some time, you do: the falling-apart-year, 
the year thieves broke into your unfinished house 
       during a storm; the earthquake year, the year of 
burying. Then, years of constant traveling, years 
       of letting yourself into the house past midnight 
while others slept, oblivious to your arrival. You  
       wanted to forget—only another way of saying   
you remember everything. Sometimes, with other 
       passengers, you took your luggage out of the hold 
and all of you sat huddled on the side of the highway, 
       waiting for another bus to come along. You can still  
see the clear, dark sky, the crescent moon suspended like
       a feather;  your figure, smudged and distant at the end  
of a scope you look through from where you sit tonight.

October 27, 2024 by Luisa A. Igloria

Death Dream, with Scent of Rosemary

The odor is unmistakeable—
delirium as entrance to an underworld,
solemn as a pillar of salt. A palmful
is enough to change fire into a wreath
you can lay on all the graves of your dead.

Is this why you want to sit 
with an apron full of these branches, 
snipping off the green digits as though  
they made up time you might 
still retrieve despite its passing?

Every night, you descend deeper
into the twilight of dreams. There are
whole towns in the distance; streets,
steeples, groves of green. A path
to the river, winding like a sheet.

October 27, 2024 by Dave Bonta

Amalek

(Lord’s day). At church in the morning; where in the pew both Sir Williams and I had much talk about the death of Sir Robert, which troubles me much; and them in appearance, though I do not believe it; because I know that he was a cheque to their engrossing the whole trade of the Navy office. Home to dinner, and in the afternoon to church again, my wife with me, whose mourning is now grown so old that I am ashamed to go to church with her. And after church to see my uncle and aunt Wight, and there staid and talked and supped with them, and were merry as we could be in their company. Among other things going up into their chamber to see their two pictures, which I am forced to commend against my judgment, and also she showed us her cabinet, where she had very pretty medals and good jewels. So home and to prayers and to bed.

death in a hole
of whose mourning

now grown so old
it could be anything

going up against us
where we pray

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Sunday 27 October 1661.

October 26, 2024 by Luisa A. Igloria

Late October

The neighbors lay out stuff 
on their front yard: patio furniture, 
planters of various shapes and sizes,
bowls and books and magazines; quilts,
winter coats and summer jackets. All
day long, people come by to take a look.
Someone walks away with a small shelf,
another with a desk lamp. At the age
I'm at, I've long wanted to start my own 
cleaning-out but can't seem to get to it. 
I wish I could say I don't want anything 
more, but that wouldn't be true. I had  
a toy piano in childhood, and even if I 
can't remember it well, suddenly I miss
its firetruck-red stain, its octave of 
imitation keys.  In another week, 
it will be time to turn back the clocks
an hour. I wish I knew what's ahead
besides the dark dropping earlier,
besides the leaves of the fig 
curling up like hands hiding 
their last green gashes of color.

October 26, 2024 by Dave Bonta

Dawn raid

This morning Sir W. Pen and I should have gone out of town with my Lady Batten, to have met Sir William coming back from Portsmouth; at Kingston, but could not, by reason that my Lord of Peterborough (who is to go Governor of Tangier) came this morning, with Sir G. Carteret, to advise with us about completing of the affairs and preparacions for that place. So at the office all the morning, and in the afternoon Sir W. Pen, my wife and I to the Theatre, and there saw “The Country Captain,” the first time it hath been acted this twenty-five years, a play of my Lord Newcastle’s, but so silly a play as in all my life I never saw, and the first that ever I was weary of in my life. So home again, and in the evening news was brought that Sir R. Slingsby, our Comptroller (who hath this day been sick a week), is dead; which put me into so great a trouble of mind, that all the night I could not sleep, he being a man that loved me, and had many qualitys that made me to love him above all the officers and commissioners in the Navy. Coming home we called at Dan Rawlinson’s; and there drank good sack, and so home.

morning coming
without preparation
weary and sick
I put all the night in a sack

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Saturday 26 October 1661.

October 25, 2024October 25, 2024 by Luisa A. Igloria

Landscape, with Signs of Life

I wish I could reassure you that soon,
this brooding will fade, this ache
seemingly fixed on the edge of the daily; 
ink-green of a forest encircling the little 
clearings we make and have come to call 
our residence—our flour-dusted streets 
and neat hedges, the cotton squares 
on which we rest our heads to sleep. 
Animals call to each other at the edge 
of the river and in the eaves of trees. They, 
too, must swallow the hard seeds of chance. 
Everything passes through our bodies:
we take what sustenance we can, and let go 
of the sorrow which glimmers in heaps, 
in moonlight. Look, these are the things
that must not have been strong enough 
to keep resisting toward the idea of joy.

October 25, 2024 by Dave Bonta

Playful

To Whitehall, and so to dinner at the Wardrobe, where my wife met me, and there we met with a venison pasty, and my Lady very merry and very handsome, methought. After dinner my wife and I to the Opera, and there saw again “Love and Honour,” a play so good that it has been acted but three times and I have seen them all, and all in this week; which is too much, and more than I will do again a good while. Coming out of the house we met Mrs. Pierce and her comrade Mrs. Clifford, and I seeming willing to stay with them to talk my wife grew angry, and whether she be jealous or no I know not, but she loves not that I should speak of Mrs. Pierce. Home on foot very discontented, in my way I calling at the Instrument maker, Hunt’s, and there saw my lute, which is now almost done, it being to have a new neck to it and to be made to double strings. So home and to bed. This day I did give my man Will a sound lesson about his forbearing to give us the respect due to a master and mistress.

hands ought to play
three times a week

we seem to speak
my instrument and I

neck to strings
give a sound lesson

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Friday 25 October 1661.

October 24, 2024 by Luisa A. Igloria

Slow Design


Nice tie. Nice shirt. Nice shoes. Nice hat.  
People like to ask where you bought it, 

how much it cost, whether you paid 
full price or got it on sale. Along

the bottom of the shirt, an even row 
of stitches; buttons snugly attached in 

contrasting thread. Their sameness 
and regularity means they were made

on a machine. But some makers have
gone back to doing things by hand—

panels fuse together, as needle and 
thread pick a careful track up and down, 

from side to side. The cobbler cradles 
a wooden last on her lap, tapping holes 

in leather with an awl. It takes a long time 
before the parts come, beautifully, together.