Posts

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Forestry

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.

from timber I learn
a thin plain thought

which I may remember
if ever it should come forth

in a true place
to stand still and do nothing

and I have a little wine
like rain for supper


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

Posted on by Luisa A. Igloria

Only let the body find the chime

In the country,
we save all the bits

of leftover string, the fat
that drips from the sides

of rusted nails. Waste not,
sings the crooked bird

in the clock that tells
the time a hundred ways—

or waste away.
In the afternoons,

when the sun begins to drop
through the thin atmosphere,

we sit on the porch
and begin our real work:

someone has to do it,
someone has to find the hollow

reeds through which the wind,
strafing through, might make

a different kind of sound
from the ones we know.

 

In response to Via Negativa: Open air cure.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Audiophile

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 give my viol head
to my viol maker

his name is wise
who deals in sound

a pitch merchant
here for some high words


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

Posted on by Luisa A. Igloria

Dear solitude, rarest of all

Dear solitude, rarest of all
modern conditions, in your true
state you do not ask what it is
that’s brought the seeker
to your door. There is no
requirement to bring so heavy
a raft of troubles, to list
all the tears one has shed week
after week for the innocent
and the dead. And yet, that
being what it is, I wonder
where in your depths is that cell
where the pulsing blue lights
of squad cars cannot follow,
where the dark flares bursting
from the mouths of rifles turn sterile,
then dissipate in the open air…
I want to hide in that silence where
the heart’s furious hammering
returns to the breath only
as a reassurance of stars, rest
from the onslaughts of those armies
whose footfalls I hear marching
through the streets day after day.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Open-air cure

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.

all the dull work that may kill
I do dully

I am going into the country
the old marl of knowing

how I ought to walk
to be repaired

with any humor
with any other time


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

Posted on by Luisa A. Igloria

Methodology and Authentication

Yes, the fronds of fern in the purple pot
on the corner table, the fern itself,

are real and not plastic. Touch and see.
Isn’t it lovely to make that kind of double

take? Especially since the opposite is more
commonplace. I knew someone who watered

the fake succulents in the apartment
she was house-sitting, before she discovered

they were what you might call perennial,
only in a different way. We have a book

on Strandbeests, with images of their slow-
then-quickstep locomotion along the beach.

Something about their errant progress,
driven by wind and kinetic algorithms,

makes me feel tender, even maternal: those
unvarnished legs, those long, slender ribs

and their wing-like movements. Try, try, try,
the gears seem to say. And the lone figure

on the shore, like the gulls and nervous sand
fiddlers: alert, monastic, just observing.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Neglectful

Up a little late, last night recovering my sleepiness for the night before, which was lost, and so to my office to put papers and things to right, and making up my journal from Wednesday last to this day.
All the morning at my office doing of business; at noon Mr. Hunt came to me, and he and I to the Exchange, and a Coffee House, and drank there, and thence to my house to dinner, whither my uncle Thomas came, and he tells me that he is going down to Wisbech, there to try what he can recover of my uncle Day’s estate, and seems to have good arguments for what he do go about, in which I wish him good speed. I made him almost foxed, the poor man having but a bad head, and not used I believe nowadays to drink much wine. So after dinner, they being gone, I to my office, and so home to bed.
This day I hear the judges, according to order yesterday, did bring into the Lords’ House their reasons of their judgment in the business between my Lord Bristoll and the Chancellor; and the Lords do concur with the Judges that the articles are not treason, nor regularly brought into the House, and so voted that a Committee should be chosen to examine them; but nothing to be done therein till the next sitting of this Parliament (which is like to be adjourned in a day or two), and in the mean time the two Lords to, remain without prejudice done to either of them.

last night in sleep I lost my papers
my morning
my change
my dinner
my cover
my head
and my sons that are nothing
like me


Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Tuesday 14 July 1663.

Posted on by Luisa A. Igloria

Watermelons

They sit in piles, in bins at the entry way
of every grocery store this summer—

camouflaged with wavy green, smooth as jade,
knowing how to coolly hold all their secrets in.

Inside, the smaller ones— personal size— keep
company with crenshaws, muskmelons, casabas.

Get past the tough-guy exterior to find
the core of sweetness, a cotton candy texture.

But this is not that poem about eating
the Buddha’s smile, then spitting out his teeth.

Neither do I want to think of that scene
from “The Joy Luck Club” where the man plunges

first a knife, then his whole hand, into the belly
of a ripe melon; then fucks the woman standing up,

against the wall of a deserted ballroom. I don’t
want to think of the sound made, a little explosion,

when the fruit is dropped from a height. This is not
a warning, though maybe it could be. So much hidden

sweetness all around. And the heat. Someone’s bound
to smell it, and in some way be driven out of her mind.

Posted on by Luisa A. Igloria

Moment and Aftermath

Time, I do not understand
these forms you’ve recently chosen—

a white van swerving into crowds
on the promenade, the sounds of gunfire

some mistook for Bastille Day
fireworks. I used to know the aftermath

of your ordinary passing: dark shadows of wings
dragging across the fields, then the brief

struggle of a vole torn away from its burrow.
Or the signature you’d leave on crops— one

half of the fruit unblemished, the other
pulped to a bloody ruin. You slink

through airports and train stations,
a black dog indifferent to turnstiles.

No almanac or guidebook in the corner
newsstands can predict the tremors

of your next ambition. Afterwards,
always, the rain falls and falls.

Or the sun beats down without mercy
as we walk, counting the rows of the dead.

 

In response to Via Negativa: Black Dog.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Speculators

So, it being high day, I put in to shore and to bed for two hours just, and so up again, and with the Storekeeper and Clerk of the Rope-yard up and down the Dock and Rope-house, and by and by mustered the Yard, and instructed the Clerks of the Cheque in my new way of Callbook, and that and other things done, to the Hill-house, and there we eat something, and so by barge to Rochester, and there took coach hired for our passage to London, and Mrs. Allen, the clerk of the Rope-yard’s wife with us, desiring her passage, and it being a most pleasant and warm day, we got by four o’clock home. In our way she telling us in what condition Becky Allen is married against all expectation a fellow that proves to be a coxcomb and worth little if any thing at all, and yet are entered into a way of living above their condition that will ruin them presently, for which, for the lady’s sake, I am much troubled.
Home I found all well there, and after dressing myself, I walked to the Temple; and there, from my cozen Roger, hear that the judges have this day brought in their answer to the Lords, That the articles against my Lord Chancellor are not Treason; and to-morrow they are to bring in their arguments to the House for the same.
This day also the King did send by my Lord Chamberlain to the Lords, to tell them from him, that the most of the articles against my Lord Chancellor he himself knows to be false. Thence by water to Whitehall, and so walked to St. James’s, but missed Mr. Coventry.
I met the Queen-Mother walking in the Pell Mell, led by my Lord St. Alban’s. And finding many coaches at the Gate, I found upon enquiry that the Duchess is brought to bed of a boy.
And hearing that the King and Queen are rode abroad with the Ladies of Honour to the Park, and seeing a great crowd of gallants staying here to see their return, I also staid walking up and down, and among others spying a man like Mr. Pembleton (though I have little reason to think it should be he, speaking and discoursing long with my Lord D’Aubigne), yet how my blood did rise in my face, and I fell into a sweat from my old jealousy and hate, which I pray God remove from me.
By and by the King and Queen, who looked in this dress (a white laced waistcoat and a crimson short pettycoat, and her hair dressed ci la negligence) mighty pretty; and the King rode hand in hand with her. Here was also my Lady Castlemaine rode among the rest of the ladies; but the King took, methought, no notice of her; nor when they ‘light did any body press (as she seemed to expect, and staid for it) to take her down, but was taken down by her own gentleman. She looked mighty out of humour, and had a yellow plume in her hat (which all took notice of), and yet is very handsome, but very melancholy: nor did any body speak to her, or she so much as smile or speak to any body. I followed them up into White Hall, and into the Queen’s presence, where all the ladies walked, talking and fiddling with their hats and feathers, and changing and trying one another’s by one another’s heads, and laughing. But it was the finest sight to me, considering their great beautys and dress, that ever I did see in all my life. But, above all, Mrs. Stewart in this dress, with her hat cocked and a red plume, with her sweet eye, little Roman nose, and excellent taille, is now the greatest beauty I ever saw, I think, in my life; and, if ever woman can, do exceed my Lady Castlemaine, at least in this dress nor do I wonder if the King changes, which I verily believe is the reason of his coldness to my Lady Castlemaine.
Here late, with much ado I left to look upon them, and went away, and by water, in a boat with other strange company, there being no other to be had, and out of him into a sculler half to the bridge, and so home and to Sir W. Batten, where I staid telling him and Sir J. Minnes and Mrs. Turner, with great mirth, my being frighted at Chatham by young Edgeborough, and so home to supper and to bed, before I sleep fancying myself to sport with Mrs. Stewart with great pleasure.

a pleasant day is worth little
to the lords of chance

that great crowd
like lousy hair dressed in feathers

hanging one another’s heads
and laughing to see a wart a red eye

no beauty left to look upon
and no other mirth


Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Monday 13 July 1663.