Purveyors of fine poetry since 2003.
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: the poem, in all its shape-shifting glory. Enjoy.
Continue reading “Poetry Blog Digest 2024, Week 30”
This morning we began again to sit in the mornings at the office, but before we sat down. Sir R. Slingsby and I went to Sir R. Ford’s to see his house, and we find it will be very convenient for us to have it added to the office if he can be got to part with it.
Then we sat down and did business in the office. So home to dinner, and my brother Tom dined with me, and after dinner he and I alone in my chamber had a great deal of talk, and I find that unless my father can forbear to make profit of his house in London and leave it to Tom, he has no mind to set up the trade any where else, and so I know not what to do with him.
After this I went with him to my mother, and there told her how things do fall out short of our expectations, which I did (though it be true) to make her leave off her spending, which I find she is nowadays very free in, building upon what is left to us by my uncle to bear her out in it, which troubles me much.
While I was here word is brought that my aunt Fenner is exceeding ill, and that my mother is sent for presently to come to her: also that my cozen Charles Glassecocke, though very ill himself, is this day gone to the country to his brother, John Glassecocke, who is a-dying there.
Home.
we see
a convenient part
the great bear has
nowhere to fall
and a moth is present
at his dying
Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Monday 29 July 1661.
“I love breathing, I could do it all day long.” ~ Stephen Colbert
With one hand I transfer weights
from one side of the mat to the other
while holding the rest of my body
in a plank. My trainer says Don't
forget to breathe—and I'm like
You mean don't die? I can joke
about this, of course, except
when it's for real. It's crucial
to take a breath, two, three,
without even thinking. A privilege
I take for granted sometimes, to not
fear choking from anything more than
my own spit. To have more times in
a day not constantly thinking about
the water rising, the fire coming, children
whose ribs can be counted as they exhale.
prismatic glints from a spiderweb
catching the sun
as it moves through the forest
on slow stilts
ignoring the trail
an old colliers’ road
now a deep wrinkle
through the rocks
I rest against
an enormous hemlock
and study its dead companion
scarred by woodpeckers
like a mask with a few
too many eyeholes
I take off my shoes
press my bare feet to sand
from a 410 million-year-old shore
turned to stone
distant gunshots
punctuate the silence
there’s no view at the summit
of Greenlee Mountain in the summer
only the rock oaks’
interpretive dance
moving shadows
on a slab of quartzite
a hooded warbler teaching
its young how to sing
***
Rothrock State Forest
July 26, 2024
(Lord’s day). This morning as my wife and I were going to church, comes Mrs. Ramsay to see us, so we sent her to church, and we went too, and came back to dinner, and she dined with us and was wellcome.
To church again in the afternoon, and then come home with us Sir W. Pen, and drank with us, and then went away, and my wife after him to see his daughter that is lately come out of Ireland. I staid at home at my book; she came back again and tells me that whereas I expected she should have been a great beauty, she is a very plain girl.
This evening my wife gives me all my linen, which I have put up, and intend to keep it now in my own custody.
To supper and to bed.
if I am to come home
out of my book
give me a line to keep
in my own bed
Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Sunday 28 July 1661.
When I went away
on work trips and my children
were still small, my mother
would retrieve from the hamper
a nightshirt I'd worn, or a scarf
I'd carelessly draped over a chair.
She'd line their pillows
with these unwashed articles,
declaring my ingrained scent
would remind them of me and keep
them from being disconsolate
or having bad dreams.
I never asked if these unlikely
charms soothed their separation
anxiety, somehow releasing
a cloud of comforting scent
that slipped into their beds,
resembling my body.
Like everyone else, we bear
the deep impression of hurts
and slights. These graft themselves
to what we remember of joyous
times, stirring in us like the Chimera
from Greek myths— she who is fire-
breathing monster made of different
parts: golden-maned lion and bleating goat,
fierce dragon and blue-scaled snake. And if
she is mother besides, her children's cells
live past birth in her body and in her brain,
knitting a garment she will ever wear.
To Westminster, where at Mr. Montagu’s chamber I heard a Frenchman play, a friend of Monsieur Eschar’s, upon the guitar, most extreme well, though at the best methinks it is but a bawble.
From thence to Westminster Hall, where it was expected that the Parliament was to have been adjourned for two or three months, but something hinders it for a day or two. In the lobby I spoke with Mr. George Montagu, and advised about a ship to carry my Lord Hinchingbroke and the rest of the young gentlemen to France, and they have resolved of going in a hired vessell from Rye, and not in a man of war. He told me in discourse that my Lord Chancellor is much envied, and that many great men, such as the Duke of Buckingham and my Lord of Bristoll, do endeavour to undermine him, and that he believes it will not be done; for that the King (though he loves him not in the way of a companion, as he do these young gallants that can answer him in his pleasures), yet cannot be without him, for his policy and service. From thence to the Wardrobe, where my wife met me, it being my Lord of Sandwich’s birthday, and so we had many friends here, Mr. Townsend and his wife, and Captain Ferrers lady and Captain Isham, and were very merry, and had a good venison pasty. Mr. Pargiter, the merchant, was with us also.
After dinner Mr. Townsend was called upon by Captain Cooke: so we three went to a tavern hard by, and there he did give us a song or two; and without doubt he hath the best manner of singing in the world. Back to my wife, and with my Lady Jem. and Pall by water through bridge, and showed them the ships with great pleasure, and then took them to my house to show it them (my Lady their mother having been lately all alone to see it and my wife, in my absence in the country), and we treated them well, and were very merry. Then back again through bridge, and set them safe at home, and so my wife and I by coach home again, and after writing a letter to my father at Brampton, who, poor man, is there all alone, and I have not heard from him since my coming from him, which troubles me. To bed.
I hear a guitar
under the bridge
hips great as a mother
at home there
Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Saturday 27 July 1661.
Why is the Costco Apocalypse Dinner Kit with a 25-year
shelf life suddenly trending, when those kinds of things
have been around for a while? When the world is ending,
I suppose there might be some comfort in knowing you
could have a few last bites of pasta Alfredo, pot pie or
teriyaki rice (just add water). There are at least a few
moments every day that feel apocalyptic. A geyser
explodes boiling water, mud, and rock a hundred feet
in the air. Floodwaters roar through bridges and tin house
villages. There are wars that have been raging so long,
we can't remember exactly how they started and when.
How many WCNSF could a bucket of Apocalypse meals
feed? Birds fall out of the air but no one eats them. Dead
bees lie on their sides, the broom stiffening on their legs.
"Love surprises us.
It ends."
~ Eliza Griswold
Accompany, as in provide musical support. Also walk with,
be with; hand to hold. Your designated person in rooms
claustrophobic with accusation, or just plain overwhelm. Not
dependency, more like mutualism. Woolly bats and pitcher plants,
endosymbiotic algae; pistol shrimp and goby, fig wasp and
fig. We scratched out "obey," exchanging vows. Instead,
gave our word: through sickness, health, mortgages, and sometimes
helium balloons, cake. Then and now, hard to think about that afterlife
in which none of us remain, or only one of us survives the other.
Jumpy times. You're reminded: sink then shoot up from the bottom;
knife through the surface, blubbering for air, though the world's
long arm gathers everything back in after reeling you out.
Maybe it's easy to forget, because there are magical things like flying
noodles in the world; finger limes that burst open with citrus caviar,
octopodes dreaming in multicolor within the depths. Life laps and ebbs,
punctuated at intervals with the effort of striving then stopping,
quieting to a low-key but ever present ripple in the leaves. Do the gods
respond? You're careful to make your meaning clear— Not begging for
special favor, just a decent chance to make good with what you got, time to
tick off a few more boxes. You're a small speck in the universe. Still, to be
useful in some ways, but not begrudged a go, before the end, at those
vaults of sweetness where everyone else is tossing beach balls,
wading in the kiddy pool, drinking herbal infusions out of mason jars.
Xysts lined with eucalyptus and pine, no surveillance drones, where
you could walk together. Not coming or going; tracing zig-
zag threads as if just meandering were essential, because it is.
At home all the morning, and walking met with Mr. Hill of Cambridge at Pope’s Head Alley with some women with him whom he took and me into the tavern there, and did give us wine, and would fain seem to be very knowing in the affairs of state, and tells me that yesterday put a change to the whole state of England as to the Church; for the King now would be forced to favour Presbytery, or the City would leave him: but I heed not what he says, though upon enquiry I do find that things in the Parliament are in a great disorder.
Home at noon and there found Mr. Moore, and with him to an ordinary alone and dined, and there he and I read my uncle’s will, and I had his opinion on it, and still find more and more trouble like to attend it. Back to the office all the afternoon, and that done home for all night. Having the beginning of this week made a vow to myself to drink no wine this week (finding it to unfit me to look after business), and this day breaking of it against my will, I am much troubled for it, but I hope God will forgive me.
the morning hill
a wing in the air
and the whole city is a pinion
like ice at daybreak
Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Friday 26 July 1661.