Via Negativa

August 30, 2017 by Dave Bonta

Sandstone

Up and to the office, where all the morning. At noon to the ‘Change, and there almost made my bargain about a ship for Tangier, which will bring me in a little profit with Captain Taylor. Off the ‘Change with Mr. Cutler and Sir W. Rider to Cutler’s house, and there had a very good dinner, and two or three pretty young ladies of their relations there. Thence to my case-maker for my stone case, and had it to my mind, and cost me 24s., which is a great deale of money, but it is well done and pleases me. So doing some other small errands I home, and there find my boy, Tom Edwards, come, sent me by Captain Cooke, having been bred in the King’s Chappell these four years. I propose to make a clerke of him, and if he deserves well, to do well by him. Spent much of the afternoon to set his chamber in order, and then to the office leaving him at home, and late at night after all business was done I called Will and told him my reason of taking a boy, and that it is of necessity, not out of any unkindness to him, nor should be to his injury, and then talked about his landlord’s daughter to come to my wife, and I think it will be. So home and find my boy a very schoole boy, that talks innocently and impertinently, but at present it is a sport to us, and in a little time he will leave it. So sent him to bed, he saying that he used to go to bed at eight o’clock, and then all of us to bed, myself pretty well pleased with my choice of a boy. All the newes this day is, that the Dutch are, with twenty-two sayle of ships of warr, crewsing up and down about Ostend; at which we are alarmed. My Lord Sandwich is come back into the Downes with only eight sayle, which is or may be a prey to the Dutch, if they knew our weakness and inability to set out any more speedily.

my stone is well-bred
serves well in any
injury or sport
and will go to bed
pretty as all the news
of war and sand

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Saturday 27 August 1664.

August 29, 2017 by Dave Bonta

Abandoned pasture

Up by 5 o’clock, which I have not been many a day, and down by water to Deptford, and there took in Mr. Pumpfield the rope-maker, and down with him to Woolwich to view Clothier’s cordage, which I found bad and stopped the receipt of it. Thence to the ropeyard, and there among other things discoursed with Mrs. Falconer, who tells me that she has found the writing, and Sir W. Pen’s daughter is not put into the lease for her life as he expected, and I am glad of it. Thence to the Dockyarde, and there saw the new ship in very great forwardness, and so by water to Deptford a little, and so home and shifting myself, to the ‘Change, and there did business, and thence down by water to White Hall, by the way, at the Three Cranes, putting into an alehouse and eat a bit of bread and cheese. There I could not get into the Parke, and so was fain to stay in the gallery over the gate to look to the passage into the Parke, into which the King hath forbid of late anybody’s coming, to watch his coming that had appointed me to come, which he did by and by with his lady and went to Guardener’s Lane, and there instead of meeting with one that was handsome and could play well, as they told me, she is the ugliest beast and plays so basely as I never heard anybody, so that I should loathe her being in my house. However, she took us by and by and showed us indeed some pictures at one Hiseman’s, a picture drawer, a Dutchman, which is said to exceed Lilly, and indeed there is both of the Queenes and Mayds of Honour (particularly Mrs. Stewart’s in a buff doublet like a soldier) as good pictures, I think, as ever I saw. The Queene is drawn in one like a shepherdess, in the other like St. Katharin, most like and most admirably. I was mightily pleased with this sight indeed, and so back again to their lodgings, where I left them, but before I went this mare that carried me, whose name I know not but that they call him Sir John, a pitiful fellow, whose face I have long known but upon what score I know not, but he could have the confidence to ask me to lay down money for him to renew the lease of his house, which I did give eare to there because I was there receiving a civility from him, but shall not part with my money.
There I left them, and I by water home, where at my office busy late, then home to supper, and so to bed.
This day my wife tells me Mr. Pen, Sir William’s son, is come back from France, and come to visit her. A most modish person, grown, she says, a fine gentleman.

a field for cranes
instead of that ugliest beast
the soldier-like herd
whose face I have

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Friday 26 August 1664.

August 29, 2017August 29, 2017 by Dave Bonta

Carnival (videopoem)

A quick, silent videopoem made with text-on-screen from the latest erasure poem. I’m indebted to a friend, Rachel Shaw, for commenting on the footage I’ve used here — a shot of London’s Notting Hill Carnival, which I posted to Facebook last night — that it was “weirdly beautiful with the sound off. Like anemones and seaweeds waving in the current.”

This comment was much in my mind as I selected lines for the erasure poem, which lo and behold turned out to be just the right length for a half-minute video. Enjoy.

August 29, 2017 by Dave Bonta

Carnival

Up and to the office after I had spoke to my taylor, Langford (who came to me about some work), desiring to know whether he knew of any debts that my father did owe of his own in the City. He tells me, “No, not any.” I did on purpose try him because of what words he and his wife have said of him (as Herbert told me the other day), and further did desire him, that if he knew of any or could hear of any that he should bid them come to me, and I would pay them, for I would not that because he do not pay my brother’s debts that therefore he should be thought to deny the payment of his owne.
All the morning at the office busy. At noon to the ‘Change, among other things busy to get a little by the hire of a ship for Tangier. So home to dinner, and after dinner comes Mr. Cooke to see me; it is true he was kind to me at sea in carrying messages to and fro to my wife from sea, but I did do him kindnesses too, and therefore I matter not much to compliment or make any regard of his thinking me to slight him as I do for his folly about my brother Tom’s mistress.
After dinner and some talk with him, I to my office; there busy, till by and by Jacke Noble came to me to tell me that he had Cave in prison, and that he would give me and my father good security that neither we nor any of our family should be troubled with the child; for he could prove that he was fully satisfied for him; and that if the worst came to the worst, the parish must keep it; that Cave did bring the child to his house, but they got it carried back again, and that thereupon he put him in prison. When he saw that I would not pay him the money, nor made anything of being secured against the child, he then said that then he must go to law, not himself, but come in as a witness for Cave against us. I could have told him that he could bear witness that Cave is satisfied, or else there is no money due to himself; but I let alone any such discourse, only getting as much out of him as I could. I perceive he is a rogue, and hath inquired into everything and consulted with Dr. Pepys, and that he thinks as Dr. Pepys told him that my father if he could would not pay a farthing of the debts, and yet I made him confess that in all his lifetime he never knew my father to be asked for money twice, nay, not once, all the time he lived with him, and that for his own debts he believed he would do so still, but he meant only for those of Tom.
He said now that Randall and his wife and the midwife could prove from my brother’s own mouth that the child was his, and that Tom had told them the circumstances of time, upon November 5th at night, that he got it on her.
I offered him if he would secure my father against being forced to pay the money again I would pay him, which at first he would do, give his own security, and when I asked more than his own he told me yes he would, and those able men, subsidy men, but when we came by and by to discourse of it again he would not then do it, but said he would take his course, and joyne with Cave and release him, and so we parted.
However, this vexed me so as I could not be quiet, but took coach to go speak with Mr. Cole, but met him not within, so back, buying a table by the way, and at my office late, and then home to supper and to bed, my mind disordered about this roguish business — in every thing else, I thank God, well at ease.

if I could
I would pay the sea

carrying messages from
my other life

my other mouth told me
to take joy
and not be quiet

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Thursday 25 August 1664.

August 28, 2017August 28, 2017 by Luisa A. Igloria

The Policeman’s Daughter

~ after Paula Rego’s painting with the same title (1987)

Stretched in the doorway half in and half out
of shadow, the cat knows something evil can take

the shapeshifting color of indigo, the color
of dusk falling on rusted metal roofs, glinting

on filthy streets now newly washed by rain.
The girl knows, too; though she keeps her eyes

lowered, as she concentrates on her task. By now
she has read in the papers about the 17 year old boy

dragged through the alley and past the basketball
court; of witnesses who heard him plead for his life,

heard the voices of policemen goading him to take one
of their guns, then run. One after the other, the shuttered

houses doused their lamps: this too, become modus operandi.
Then a sharp volley of shots from the vicinity of the bridge.

What do the red clay-like stains on her father’s boot
have to do with the color of these nights? If she looked

in the mirror as she worked, she might think a man
was struggling to climb, one leg at a time, out of a hole

where her shoulder socket should be. She takes a wet rag
and scrubs, observes how she can barely feel the circular

motions made by her hand. The taut, stretched skin
from some dead animal sheathes the arm that she puts

inside the shaft. This must almost be how it feels: to be
holstered, to be fixed, to be held, to be strapped.

August 27, 2017 by Luisa A. Igloria

Umami

She liked to try new things at the stove,
at night after most of the family had gone
to bed— Once, a Scandinavian recipe for black

pepper cookies. Still awake, reviewing for a test,
I got to taste them after they came out of the oven:
thin discs with a surprising woody edge of heat

that flared against a canvas of milk and sweet
butter. Another time, a cache of fermented fish
and rice— catfish, perch, or mudfish—

she’d hidden away in the cupboard for seven
days. It was storming when she took it out to cook
with garlic and red onions in a skillet: aroma

of vinegar mingled with flowered yeast;
while outside, metallic rain soaked through dry
earth and grass. As lightning ionizes the air

to fix nitrogen oxides, so my taste buds
are forever harnessed to this knowledge she
passed on to me: how flavors are more

complex when they’re swirled together,
how salty and sweet and hot and bitter build
the most memorable hit in the mouth.

August 26, 2017August 26, 2017 by Luisa A. Igloria

After

It may be that the past is another country; or a kind
of cloud-vessel shadow moving through the days.

It may be that a window is something to frantically
open, before the throat closes on itself from lack

of air. There’s another word for it, though– it means
lookout, crow’s nest, balcony, or ledge. And it may be

that a chair is only a chair and not a fortuitous
place to land, especially in the grips of vertigo.

Maybe a closed book collecting dust on a shelf isn’t
history— only a letter badly written to yourself

before you really traveled anywhere. Postcards came
in the mail with panoramas of unlined blue; bird

serifs, pebbled beaches. In time, you dared to pull
at the buttery flesh of a sea urchin with your teeth,

tipping its armored body to your lips— only the first
briny thimbleful that cracked open the passages to thirst.

In response to Via Negativa: Following orders.

August 26, 2017 by Dave Bonta

Nothing doing

Up by six o’clock, and to my office with Tom Hater dispatching business in haste. At nine o’clock to White Hall about Mr. Maes’s business at the Council, which stands in an ill condition still. Thence to Graye’s Inn, but missed of Mr. Cole the lawyer, and so walked home, calling among the joyners in Wood Streete to buy a table and bade in many places, but did not buy it till I come home to see the place where it is to stand, to judge how big it must be. So after ‘Change home and a good dinner, and then to White Hall to a Committee of the Fishery, where my Lord Craven and Mr. Gray mightily against Mr. Creed’s being joined in the warrant for Secretary with Mr. Duke. However I did get it put off till the Duke of Yorke was there, and so broke up doing nothing. So walked home, first to the Wardrobe, and there saw one suit of clothes made for my boy and linen set out, and I think to have him the latter end of this week, and so home, Mr. Creed walking the greatest part of the way with me advising what to do in his case about his being Secretary to us in conjunction with Duke, which I did give him the best I could, and so home and to my office, where very much business, and then home to supper and to bed.

I hate haste

at a stand-still I see
where to stand

how big must be a committee
for doing nothing

one suit with his secretary
I did the best I could

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Wednesday 24 August 1664.

August 25, 2017 by Dave Bonta

Falling (videopoem)

During a visit to Kew Gardens the other week, I was charmed by the interactions of the visitors — a highly multi-ethnic crowd — with an installation called The Hive, by artist Wolfgang Buttress, which is designed to raise consciousness about the plight of bees and other pollinators. Looking at the videos I shot on my hand-me-down iPhone, I was reminded of an old poem-like thing that seemed to complement the footage rather well, which I later supplemented with a couple of other shots from Tate Modern. After extensive tinkering, I decided that the best soundtrack was simply the audio I’d picked up at The Hive, which generated a kind of ambient soundscape “triggered by bee activity in a real beehive at Kew.” Unfortunately, the gardens are right under the flight path of jets landing at Heathrow, but given the subject matter of the videopoem, that noise didn’t seem entirely out-of-place.

August 25, 2017 by Dave Bonta

Time to retire

Lay long talking with my wife, and angry awhile about her desiring to have a French mayde all of a sudden, which I took to arise from yesterday’s being with her mother. But that went over and friends again, and so she be well qualitied, I care not much whether she be French or no, so a Protestant. Thence to the office, and at noon to the ‘Change, where very busy getting ships for Guinny and for Tangier. So home to dinner, and then abroad all the afternoon doing several errands, to comply with my oath of ending many businesses before Bartholomew’s day, which is two days hence. Among others I went into New Bridewell, in my way to Mr. Cole, and there I saw the new model, and it is very handsome. Several at work, among others, one pretty whore brought in last night, which works very lazily. I did give them 6d. to drink, and so away. To Graye’s Inn, but missed Mr. Cole, and so homeward called at Harman’s, and there bespoke some chairs for a room, and so home, and busy late, and then to supper and to bed. The Dutch East India Fleete are now come home safe, which we are sorry for. Our Fleets on both sides are hastening out to Guinny.

a sudden moth
on my hand

who works so gray
so late

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Tuesday 23 August 1664.