Via Negativa

July 3, 2024 by Dave Bonta

World stage

To Westminster Hall and there walked up and down, it being Term time. Spoke with several, among others my cozen Roger Pepys, who was going up to the Parliament House, and inquired whether I had heard from my father since he went to Brampton, which I had done yesterday, who writes that my uncle is by fits stupid, and like a man that is drunk, and sometimes speechless.
Home, and after my singing master had done, took coach and went to Sir William Davenant’s Opera; this being the fourth day that it hath begun, and the first that I have seen it. To-day was acted the second part of “The Siege of Rhodes.” We staid a very great while for the King and the Queen of Bohemia. And by the breaking of a board over our heads, we had a great deal of dust fell into the ladies’ necks and the men’s hair, which made good sport. The King being come, the scene opened; which indeed is very fine and magnificent, and well acted, all but the Eunuch, who was so much out that he was hissed off the stage.
Home and wrote letters to my Lord at sea, and so to bed.

who writes like a speechless
singing master

day breaking
over our heads

we become
the scene we act

all but the hiss
of the sea

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Tuesday 2 July 1661.

July 3, 2024July 2, 2024 by Luisa A. Igloria

The Idea of Light

river in November light between bare woods and mountain

Mark, who has a tall ladder, helps us every now 
and then with little house repairs. Tonight, 

he came to attach solar-powered motion sensor 
lights on one side of the house. The ones I got

are small but give off beams in three settings—
bright and on all night after dusk, dim but brightening, 

or suddenly bright at detected motion. The idea 
of light is that it foregrounds what's cloaked in shadow 

and therefore precarious—a short flight of crooked 
steps, the space underneath where someone 

of dubious intention might crouch. A stray cat
prowls this part of the neighborhood and winds up

on the lowest corner of the roof. A masked
raccoon watches intently in the fork of a tree.

July 2, 2024July 1, 2024 by Luisa A. Igloria

The problem with daily planners

is that they can't ever anticipate
how much or how little time you have 
for getting things done—whether 

one square is enough, or several
pages. And how could anyone know
what the weekly, monthly, or yearly

spread looks like, except in review?
But have you ever had a moment
that suddenly telescoped forward, 

during which the scene you were looking 
at sharpened, clear as clairvoyance, though 
you'd never experienced it before? 

At least a couple of times in my life,
I think I was given the tiniest glimpse:
part of something before it happened, 

before my mind could understand
what it was I was looking at; of someone
before they entered the actual field

of my connections. Across a room,
the angles of a face uncoil like a nautilus,
a hidden sheen of light flickering inside. 

How to speak of the ache from being inhabited 
by time in this way, even then, knowing there's 
nothing I would do but keep walking toward it.

July 1, 2024July 1, 2024 by Dave Bonta

Poetry Blog Digest 2024, Week 26

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: an orchestra of inflammation, a library of lost chapbooks, words written in eyeliner on a band aid wrapper, and a complicated kind of joy… among many other things. Enjoy!

July 1, 2024 by Dave Bonta

Staycation

This morning I went up and down into the city, to buy several things, as I have lately done, for my house. Among other things, a fair chest of drawers for my own chamber, and an Indian gown for myself. The first cost me 33s., the other 34s. Home and dined there, and Theodore Goodgroome, my singing master, with me, and then to our singing. After that to the office, and then home.

into thin air
my own India

my first other ore
singing as I sing

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Monday 1 July 1661.

July 1, 2024June 29, 2024 by Luisa A. Igloria

Blossoms

When you are sad in the spring
                  ask to be taken to the sea

where seabirds launch themselves 
                 like runes into the sky 

If the waters are too cold
                  ask to be brought 

beneath a canopy of white 
                 and pink blossoms—

there, where even in falling,
                 the lesson is about wings

June 30, 2024 by Dave Bonta

Gunman

(Lord’s day). To church, where we observe the trade of briefs is come now up to so constant a course every Sunday, that we resolve to give no more to them. A good sermon, and then home to dinner, my wife and I all alone.
After dinner Sir Williams both and I by water to Whitehall, where having walked up and down, at last we met with the Duke of York, according to an order sent us yesterday from him, to give him an account where the fault lay in the not sending out of the ships, which we find to be only the wind hath been against them, and so they could not get out of the river. Hence I to Graye’s Inn Walk, all alone, and with great pleasure seeing the fine ladies walk there. Myself humming to myself (which now-a-days is my constant practice since I begun to learn to sing) the trillo, and found by use that it do come upon me. Home very weary and to bed, finding my wife not sick, but yet out of order, that I fear she will come to be sick. This day the Portuguese Embassador came to White Hall to take leave of the King; he being now going to end all with the Queen, and to send her over.
The weather now very fair and pleasant, but very hot. My father gone to Brampton to see my uncle Robert, not knowing whether to find him dead or alive. Myself lately under a great expense of money upon myself in clothes and other things, but I hope to make it up this summer by my having to do in getting things ready to send with the next fleet to the Queen.
Myself in good health, but mighty apt to take cold, so that this hot weather I am fain to wear a cloth before my belly.

alone in the wind
humming to my gun

finding that I am dead
under my clothes

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Sunday 30 June 1661.

June 30, 2024June 30, 2024 by Dave Bonta

Submission

This entry is part 31 of 51 in the series Une Semaine de Bonté

Page 31 of Max Ernst’s *Une Semaine de Bonté*

oh this rabbit heart
these mosquito lusts

how to keep
them in line how
to make them fit

from jackrabbit
to jackhammer
from blood to clutch

i have defaced
the mirror on my wall

spoiling its pure
emptiness with
my presence

i shall work harder
at vanishing
into rage

June 29, 2024 by Dave Bonta

Reading for pleasure

By a letter from the Duke complaining of the delay of the ships that are to be got ready, Sir Williams both and I went to Deptford and there examined into the delays, and were satisfyed. So back again home and staid till the afternoon, and then I walked to the Bell at the Maypole in the Strand, and thither came to me by appointment Mr. Chetwind, Gregory, and Hartlibb, so many of our old club, and Mr. Kipps, where we staid and drank and talked with much pleasure till it was late, and so I walked home and to bed.
Mr. Chetwind by chewing of tobacco is become very fat and sallow, whereas he was consumptive, and in our discourse he fell commending of “Hooker’s Ecclesiastical Polity,” as the best book, and the only one that made him a Christian, which puts me upon the buying of it, which I will do shortly.

read to me
a bell in the wind

go to bed chewing
on a hooker’s book

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Saturday 29 June 1661.

June 29, 2024June 29, 2024 by Luisa A. Igloria

On the Nonreactive


The noble gases are helium, argon, 
neon, krypton, radon, and xenon—stable 

and unreactive, rarely combining with other 
elements. Were they named after aristocrats,

who hold themselves apart from the hoi polloi? 
The past is filled with stories of scientists, 

writers, artists, and intellectuals who were either
independently wealthy or poor geniuses who

enjoyed sponsorship from a monarch or a wealthy 
patron. The noble pursuit of knowledge requires

some means: to stock a lab with equipment, collect
novel specimens from the other side of the world,

run experiments over and over again. Buddhists say 
it's better to be nonreactive, to cultivate a demeanor 

not of callous indifference, but of dispassionate 
observation. If I were gas, I know I wouldn't be able 

to call my nature noble—I react. I'm the type who wears 
her heart on her sleeve, cries over every hurt, large 

or small; rants and rages even about things I clearly
have no dispensation over. There's a UK company 

selling "Salt Made from Tears of Sorrow"—I wonder
where it's gathered, and if more is harvested from 

mothers, or from children. As for me, I can only hope 
the harm I've done in this life is outweighed by the good; 

that the times I've been a brat or a bitch or a pain or
have made someone cry tears of misery are altogether 

fewer than the times I've been of use, the times I've
kept myself open despite the possibility of a wound.