Via Negativa

July 20, 2026July 20, 2026 by Luisa A. Igloria

Coincidence

river in November light between bare woods and mountain

At a lunch gathering, two friends tell
of how their parents knew each other 
from having played tennis doubles. 
They knew each other's parents back 
then, when they were children in 
ruffled socks and patent leather shoes. 
But as with most everything, that part 
of their lives veered off in other directions. 
Then one day, decades later, these two 
(now past middle age, walking the same 
college hallways), saw the faded sports 
logo on a tote or a sweatshirt and froze 
in the instant of recall: the thwack of balls 
bouncing on synthetic turf, sycamore trees 
at the edge of the courts, screams of children 
at a nearby park. We call it chance, but what if 
coincidence is merely the long garment of time 
revealing a secret pocket? What if a ball lobbed 
one long morning ago into the air has been traveling
toward this moment, before falling into the open
hand of recognition? In the Poetics, Aristotle said 
a likely impossibility is preferable to an unlikely
possibility. We shake our heads but smile.
There's no need to explain the complicated 
patterns made by the shadow of leaves 
as sunlight passes through them: how they
will slant toward the south-facing wall 
at dusk, before dissolving into themselves.

July 20, 2026July 20, 2026 by Dave Bonta

Poetry Blog Digest 2026, Week 29

A personal selection of posts from around the Anglophone blogosphere, including Substack, with a commitment to following a somewhat haphazardly chosen selection of poets, poetry lovers, literary critics and publishers over time. 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: wildly latticing light, hot jets of horse breath, a ropey ladder down to oblivion, and much more. Enjoy.

July 20, 2026 by Dave Bonta

Doctored

(Lord’s day). Lay very long in pleasant dreams till Church time, and so up, and it being foul weather so that I cannot walk as I intended to meet my Cozen Roger at Thomas Pepys’s house (whither he rode last night), to Hatcham, I went to church, where a sober Doctor made a good sermon. So home to dinner alone, and then to read a little, and so to church again, where the Scot made an ordinary sermon, and so home to my office, and there read over my vows and increased them by a vow against all strong drink till November next of any sort or quantity, by which I shall try how I can forbear it. God send it may not prejudice my health, and then I care not. Then I fell to read over a silly play writ by a person of honour (which is, I find, as much as to say a coxcomb), called “Love a la Mode”.
And that being ended, home, and played on my lute and sung psalms till bedtime, then to prayers and to bed.

in a dream
a doctor made me
ordinary again

till I fell ill
in love
till bedtime prayers

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Sunday 19 July 1663.

July 19, 2026July 19, 2026 by Luisa A. Igloria

Giving it All Up

A famous singer's longtime  guitarist 
just released his first solo album. He's in 
his seventies, spent decades inside
someone else's songs, providing 
the opening riffs, the endings. Perhaps 
it's unsurprising that words like end 
or beginning grow soft with time. 
In a radio interview, he talks about
waking up one morning, wanting to open
another door, follow where it leads  Once 
I may have thought that starting over 
meant burning things down, throwing 
other things away, leaving only the bleached 
sheen of floorboards. At the end of this street
that people call a dead end with no outlet, 
the river is just humming to itself. In some 
front yards the grass is freshly trimmed, 
and in others the green is long-haired, 
even defiant. And time itself is a room 
inside of which we continue trying on outfits, 
arrangements, stacking and restacking cups 
and dishes, wiping dust off headboards, shining 
the silver; sorting the trash from recyclables,
vowing not to speak to each other ever again.
Perhaps things that stop or vanish haven't really 
gone into the dark, but into a freedom I'm being asked 
to consider, though I don't understand completely—
Even the hero is told to lash himself to a raft,
surrender to the water and to the fickle gods
who request sacrifice, and then like stars  
release a little light from a great distance.

July 19, 2026 by Dave Bonta

Manual

Up and to my office, where all the morning, and Sir J. Minnes and I did a little, and but a little business at the office. So I eat a bit of victuals at home, and so abroad to several places, as my bookseller’s, and then to Thomson the instrument maker’s to bespeak a ruler for my pocket for timber, &c., which I believe he will do to my mind. So to the Temple, Wardrobe, and lastly to Westminster Hall, where I expected some bands made me by Mrs. Lane, and while she went to the starchers for them, I staid at Mrs. Howlett’s, who with her husband were abroad, and only their daughter (which I call my wife) was in the shop, and I took occasion to buy a pair of gloves to talk to her, and I find her a pretty spoken girl, and will prove a mighty handsome wench. I could love her very well.
By and by Mrs. Lane comes, and my bands not being done she and I posted and met at the Crown in the Palace Yard, where we eat a chicken I sent for, and drank, and were mighty merry, and I had my full liberty of towzing her and doing what I would, but the last thing of all; for I felt as much as I would and made her feel my thing also, and put the end of it to her breast and by and by to her very belly — of which I am heartily ashamed. But I do resolve never to do more so.
But, Lord! to see what a mind she has to a husband, and how she showed me her hands to tell her her fortune, and every thing that she asked ended always whom and when she was to marry. And I pleased her so well, saying as I know she would have me, and then she would say that she had been with all the artists in town, and they always told her the same things, as that she should live long, and rich, and have a good husband, but few children, and a great fit of sickness, and 20 other things, which she says she has always been told by others.
Here I staid late before my bands were done, and then they came, and so I by water to the Temple, and thence walked home, all in a sweat with my tumbling of her and walking, and so a little supper and to bed, fearful of having taken cold.

the instrument maker’s
daughter loves
to talk to her hands

full of doing
and a feel for art

they should have children
and 20 other ways
to be one

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Saturday 18 July 1663.

July 18, 2026July 17, 2026 by Luisa A. Igloria

Hometown

- after Larry Levis

Of his boyhood bathed in dust
and vines, a poet wrote: A life like that? 
It seemed to go on forever— Labor in fields 
and orchards, hours in the bland hallways 

of school followed by nights as seasons 
changed from one currency to another.
If I lean hard into the pocket of air 
right by my cheek, I can hear 

the gurgle of frogs beneath the vegetable 
plots, the sharp scouring of wet driveways 
by aunts armed with stiff-bristled brooms. 
I also want to say I was happy then, pulling 

chayote off a trellis covered with tendrils
like old telephone coils, lighting a spiral 
of Elephant katol in its clay dish before 
inhaling its eucalyptus fume. When

did frost scald rows of cabbages,
wilting them leaf to bone? In church,
on Sundays a priest in robes of silk
dipped bayabas branches 

into an urn of water and shook
droplets over our bowed heads.
Sometimes doves flew in from 
the parking lot and hovered

in the vaulted ceiling. Cool
marble of tile underfoot. Votives
that we knew would flicker out
when flame hit the empty pans.

July 17, 2026 by Dave Bonta

Still hunter

Up, and after doing some business at my office, Creed came to me, and I took him to my viall maker’s, and there I heard the famous Mr. Stefkins play admirably well, and yet I found it as it is always, I over expected. I took him to the tavern and found him a temperate sober man, at least he seems so to me. I commit the direction of my viall to him.
Thence to the Change, and so home, Creed and I to dinner, and after dinner Sir W. Warren came to me, and he and I in my closet about his last night’s contract, and from thence to discourse of measuring of timber, wherein I made him see that I could understand the matter well, and did both learn of and teach him something. Creed being gone through my staying talking to him so long, I went alone by water down to Redriffe, and so to sit and talk with Sir W. Pen, where I did speak very plainly concerning my thoughts of Sir G. Carteret and Sir J. Minnes. So as it may cost me some trouble if he should tell them again, but he said as much or more to me concerning them both, which I may remember if ever it
should come forth, and nothing but what is true and my real opinion of them, that they neither do understand to this day Creed’s accounts, nor do deserve to be employed in their places without better care, but that the King had better give them greater salaries to stand still and do nothing.
Thence coming home I was saluted by Bagwell and his wife (the woman I have a kindness for), and they would have me into their little house, which I was willing enough to, and did salute his wife. They had got wine for me, and I perceive live prettily, and I believe the woman a virtuous modest woman.
Her husband walked through to Redriffe with me, telling me things that I asked of in the yard, and so by water home, it being likely to rain again to-night, which God forbid. To supper and to bed.

in a timber stand
I learn to sit

thoughts may cost me
nothing but what is true

to be still and have
a little rain for supper

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Friday 17 July 1663.

July 17, 2026 by Dave Bonta

Subversive

Up and dispatched things into the country and to my father’s, and two keggs of Sturgeon and a dozen bottles of wine to Cambridge for my cozen Roger Pepys, which I give him. By and by down by water on several Deall ships, and stood upon a stage in one place seeing calkers sheathing of a ship. Then at Wapping to my carver’s about my Viall head. So home, and thence to my Viall maker’s in Bishopsgate Street; his name is Wise, who is a pretty fellow at it. Thence to the Exchange, and so home to dinner, and then to my office, where a full board, and busy all the afternoon, and among other things made a great contract with Sir W. Warren for 40,000 deals Swinsound, at 3l. 17s. 0d. per hundred. In the morning before I went on the water I was at Thames Street about some pitch, and there meeting Anthony Joyce, I took him and Mr. Stacy, the Tarr merchant, to the tavern, where Stacy told me many old stories of my Lady Batten’s former poor condition, and how her former husband broke, and how she came to her state.
At night, after office done, I went to Sir W. Batten’s, where my Lady and I [had] some high words about emptying our house of office, where I did tell her my mind, and at last agreed that it should be done through my office, and so all well. So home to bed.

I stood on my head
to make a low sound

at the tavern where old
stories broke me

I went at my words
emptying my mind

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Thursday 16 July 1663.

July 17, 2026July 16, 2026 by Luisa A. Igloria

Allegories of Exile


~ after "Paradise Lost," Raqib Shaw


There are things that bring me back 
to myself as soon as I'm in their presence,

though I might not have known that to be true
the minute before— A window layered all in blue

on the lower floor of a gallery, the opening 
lines of a cello that pry something open in me. 

One morning I stood enraptured before a hundred-
foot mural, and a stone seemed to roll away from 

a sealed tomb. The artist had applied brilliant 
automobile enamel paint with fine needle tips 

of syringes and porcupine quills. The many 
avatars of himself crossed landscapes lit

on fire, studded with rhinestones, crowded 
with creatures howling at the moon. Blue 

baboons tore the hearts out of their shredded 
prey like priests presiding over a sacrament. 

Centaurs flung baskets of gold coins into the air.
Hordes of elk and hummingbirds stampeded 

off the cliffs in a shower of springtime blossoms. 
Yes, I see what our world has become, and what we

have become in it. Yes, I know what it means to sob 
when I can't find words for the untranslatable. When

did we stop carrying lanterns for each other?
There goes a picnic basket holding fig jam, rare

cheeses, olives glistening in pools of oil: 
abundance drowning in violent ocean swells. 

And yet there's time to write this story on paper, 
with ink, under a saffron tree. Time to listen to what 

leaves and what arrives. To love, even now, what breaks 
and is beautiful, what's beautiful because it breaks.

July 16, 2026 by Dave Bonta

Killers

Up and all the morning at the office, among other things with Cooper the Purveyor, whose dullness in his proceeding in his work I was vexed at, and find that though he understands it may be as much as other men that profess skill in timber, yet I perceive that many things, they do by rote, and very dully.
Thence home to dinner, whither Captain Grove came and dined with me, he going into the country to-day; among other discourse he told me of discourse very much to my honour, both as to my care and ability, happening at the Duke of Albemarle’s table the other day, both from the Duke, and the Duchess themselves; and how I paid so much a year to him whose place it was of right, and that Mr. Coventry did report thus of me; which was greatly to my content, knowing how against their minds I was brought into the Navy.
Thence by water to Westminster, and there spent a good deal of time walking in the Hall, which is going to be repaired, and, God forgive me, had a mind to have got Mrs. Lane abroad, or fallen in with any woman else (in that hot humour). But it so happened she could not go out, nor I meet with any body else, and so I walked homeward, and in my way did many and great businesses of my own at the Temple among my lawyers and others to my great content, thanking God that I did not fall into any company to occasion spending time and money. To supper, and then to a little viall and to bed, sporting in my fancy with the Queen.

men that kill perceive
many things dully

go into the country
to right their minds

into the Navy
to be repaired

for a hot war
fall into bed

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Wednesday 15 July 1663.