Via Negativa

May 19, 2025May 20, 2025 by Dave Bonta

Poetry Blog Digest 2025, Week 20

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: grief and blossoms, poems about frogs, purposeful loafing, the crosshairs of the present, and much more. Enjoy.

May 19, 2025 by Dave Bonta

Stolen time

Long in bed, sometimes scolding with my wife, and then pleased again, and at last up, and put on my riding cloth suit, and a camelott coat new, which pleases me well enough. To the Temple about my replication, and so to my brother Tom’s, and there hear that my father will be in town this week. So home, the shops being but some shut and some open. I hear that the House of Commons do think much that they should be forced to huddle over business this morning against the afternoon, for the King to pass their Acts, that he may go out of town. But he, I hear since, was forced to stay till almost nine o’clock at night before he could have done, and then he prorogued them; and so to Gilford, and lay there. Home, and Mr. Hunt dined with me, and were merry. After dinner Sir W. Pen and his daughter, and I and my wife by coach to the Theatre, and there in a box saw “The Little Thief” well done. Thence to Moorefields, and walked and eat some cheesecake and gammon of bacon, but when I was come home I was sick, forced to vomit it up again. So my wife walking and singing upon the leads till very late, it being pleasant and moonshine, and so to bed.

bed time again
riding to replication

we shut the clock
in a box

the little thief
of home and moons

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Monday 19 May 1662.

May 18, 2025May 19, 2025 by Luisa A. Igloria

Poem with Amphora, Showing a Hero’s End

river in November light between bare woods and mountain

         Who are we to know what role
we get to play in life— whether
    hero or foil, or character 
meant to swell a scene or take
         
         the fall for someone else— before
we're unremembered? On the surface of   
    Exekias' amphora, the warrior bends,  
preparing to fall on his own sword.  

         Is it shame from dishonor, every  
battle fought well and bravely but still
    coming in only second best? One of
my college professors said the idea

         of an afterlife that's nothing 
but liminal space (impenetrable 
    fog between here and there, 
with neither joy nor pain) might be

         enough to goad even the stoic 
to some kind of action. But reward  
    is never the kind we expect, nor is 
punishment. The goal could be noble 

        (unless feigned), when putting 
collective interest ahead of individual 
    gain. Why did Ajax want that shield 
so much, and why would that kind 

         of desire be too excessive? 
Today the invocation of his name 
      brings to mind a character 
in the Marvel universe; or a popular 

         powder cleanser whose main
ingredients are calcium and sodium 
      carbonate. Yet Ajax bore Achilles'
body off the battlefield and fought

         for his friend's armor. Down
the centuries, though, it's the beautiful  
     favored ones always striking poses, 
their oiled bodies gleaming in the sun.

May 18, 2025 by Dave Bonta

Negotiations

(Whitsunday). By water to White Hall, and there to chappell in my pew belonging to me as Clerk of the Privy Seal; and there I heard a most excellent sermon of Dr. Hacket, Bishop of Lichfield and Coventry, upon these words: “He that drinketh this water shall never thirst.” We had an excellent anthem, sung by Captain Cooke and another, and brave musique. And then the King came down and offered, and took the sacrament upon his knees; a sight very well worth seeing. Hence with Sir G. Carteret to his lodging to dinner with his Lady and one Mr. Brevin, a French Divine, we were very merry, and good discourse, and I had much talk with my Lady. After dinner, and so to chappell again; and there had another good anthem of Captain Cooke’s. Thence to the Councell-chamber; where the King and Councell sat till almost eleven o’clock at night, and I forced to walk up and down the gallerys till that time of night. They were reading all the bills over that are to pass to-morrow at the House, before the King’s going out of town and proroguing the House.
At last the Councell risen, and Sir G. Carteret telling me what the Councell hath ordered about the ships designed to carry horse from Ireland to Portugall, which is now altered. I got a coach and so home, sending the boat away without me. At home I found my wife discontented at my being abroad, but I pleased her. She was in her new suit of black sarcenet and yellow petticoat very pretty. So to bed.

sun belonging to the sea
the field shall thirst

the king on his knees
before a risen horse

his red road
her yellow coat

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Sunday 18 May 1662.

May 17, 2025 by Dave Bonta

Burnt out

Upon a letter this morning from Mr. Moore, I went to my cozen Turner’s chamber, and there put him drawing a replication to Tom Trice’s answer speedily. So to Whitehall and there met Mr. Moore, and I walked long in Westminster Hall, and thence with him to the Wardrobe to dinner, where dined Mrs. Sanderson, the mother of the maids, and after dinner my Lady and she and I on foot to Pater Noster Row to buy a petticoat against the Queen’s coming for my Lady, of plain satin, and other things; and being come back again, we there met Mr. Nathaniel Crew at the Wardrobe with a young gentleman, a friend and fellow student of his, and of a good family, Mr. Knightly, and known to the Crews, of whom my Lady privately told me she hath some thoughts of a match for my Lady Jemimah. I like the person very well, and he hath 2000l. per annum. Thence to the office, and there we sat, and thence after writing letters to all my friends with my Lord at Portsmouth, I walked to my brother Tom’s to see a velvet cloak, which I buy of Mr. Moore. It will cost me 8l. 10s.; he bought it for 6l. 10s., but it is worth my money. So home and find all things made clean against to-morrow, which pleases me well. So to bed.

I am a raw
answer to war

another foot coming
for another me

good night now
to the match

like the letter I
my brother made

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Saturday 17 May 1662.

May 16, 2025 by Dave Bonta

Immersion

Up early, Mr. Hater and I to the office, and there I made an end of my book of contracts which I have been making an abstract of. Dined at home, and spent most of the day at the office. At night to supper and bed.

at the end of my book
I have been in
an abstract home

and spent most
of the day
at night

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Friday 16 May 1662.

May 15, 2025May 15, 2025 by Luisa A. Igloria

San Fernando

(La Union, Philippines)


The city of my father's birth
bears the name of the King of Castile 
and Galicia— canonized 419 years after 
his death. I couldn't find any reports 
on miracles he may have performed. But
Ferdinand drove out the Moors and 
expanded these kingdoms for the Church, 
which makes it sound like that kind 
of good work is enough to get you 
sainthood. My father is not a Spaniard, 
and never was nor wanted to become  
a priest. His mother liked to boast 
that she was some part (not pure) 
European— mestiza, india mixed 
with the colonizer's blood. I wonder 
what happened to the house where he 
grew up, windows overlooking streets 
lined with aratiles trees— in summer, 
filled with cotton candy berries, festival 
berries; doves purpling in their shade. 
San Fernando lies in a gold and crystal
casket, in the Cathedral of Seville— 
dry, leathered, but his body 
incorrupt (another test one must pass 
for sainthood). In the northern coastal
town where my father was born, surfers 
and artists who say they're tired 
of big city life have set up 
cafes and studios. Rather than pure 
blood or pedigree, perhaps some 
of them are even there to seek out 
the native in their roots.

May 15, 2025May 15, 2025 by Dave Bonta

Sea changes

To Westminster; and at the Privy Seal I saw Mr. Coventry’s seal for his being Commissioner with us, at which I know not yet whether to be glad or otherwise. So doing several things by the way, I walked home, and after dinner to the office all the afternoon. At night, all the bells of the town rung, and bonfires made for the joy of the Queen’s arrival, who came and landed at Portsmouth last night. But I do not see much thorough joy, but only an indifferent one, in the hearts of people, who are much discontented at the pride and luxury of the Court, and running in debt.

we in the sea know
whether to be otherwise

things of night
bells of fire or arrival

but an indifferent heart
is a luxury

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Thursday 15 May 1662.

May 14, 2025May 14, 2025 by Luisa A. Igloria

The Stone of Madness


                        No stone
is safe from our probing, no seabed
spared from the sweep 
                      for copper, 
cobalt, nickel, zinc. History abounds 
with pictures of extraction— 
                             Open pits 
tunnelling into the earth, 
ferrous-tinted water  
                     coursing through 
the gorge. Layers of salt crust, lithium 
brine conveyed to evaporation  
                              flats— 
Lithos, the Greek word for stone.
It's light and soft— so soft 
                              that it 
can be cut with a kitchen knife and 
so low in density that it floats 
                                 on water.
It lights up the temples of this world 
and has the power to change 
                            the brain.
Around Hieronymus Bosch's famous
painting, gold-scrolled 
                        letters read:
Master, cut the stone out, fast. Ward off
madness with a scalpel, an amulet, 
                                   a flower bud.

May 14, 2025 by Dave Bonta

War fare

All the morning at Westminster and elsewhere about business, and dined at the Wardrobe; and after dinner, sat talking an hour or two alone with my Lady. She is afeard that my Lady Castlemaine will keep still with the King, and I am afeard she will not, for I love her well. Thence to my brother’s, and finding him in a lie about the lining of my new morning gown, saying that it was the same with the outside, I was very angry with him and parted so. So home after an hour stay at Paul’s Churchyard, and there came Mr. Morelock of Chatham, and brought me a stately cake, and I perceive he has done the same to the rest, of which I was glad; so to bed.

elsewhere a war
in my still ear

will no new morning
stay the state

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Wednesday 14 May 1662.