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Via Negativa

Via Negativa

Purveyors of fine poetry since 2003.

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Series: Toward Noon: 3verses

When a three-legged dog chases its tail, the stakes are higher, somehow. These poems are like that: trios of unrhymed tercets that strain toward the phantom limb of a resolution but never quite reach it. I call this form 3verse. It takes its cue from the web comic 3eanuts, which consists of old Peanuts strips from which the fourth panel has been amputated. The result is something perhaps sadder but also freer, more open-ended, succeeding in ways the original strips could not.

Ideas for the poems usually come to me on mid-day walks, whence the working title of the series.

Posted on January 22, 2014February 4, 2014 by Dave Bonta

January noon

This entry is part 1 of 91 in the series Toward Noon: 3verses

 

In the owl’s flight
as in the conifers it left:
that silence.

It’s enormous,
the frozen carcass of a cow
eaten by chickadees.

O trees like forks,
the sky too is a dish
best served cold.

Posted on January 23, 2014May 11, 2014 by Dave Bonta

Primary sources

This entry is part 2 of 91 in the series Toward Noon: 3verses

 

One line for all
the caravans of the internet—
its wavy shadow.

Looking at bird tracks,
I feel a certain anxiety
of influence.

I chew on a piece
of congealed black cherry sap
from a head-sized burl.

Posted on January 26, 2014February 4, 2014 by Dave Bonta

Nuthatch

This entry is part 3 of 91 in the series Toward Noon: 3verses

 

Nuthatch at the window,
probing under the sill
for frozen bugs and pupae,

one eye on the glass
where, behind the bare trees,
my bare face swims up—

that odd ice
on a sideways pond
with its year-round winter…

Posted on January 27, 2014February 4, 2014 by Dave Bonta

Haustorial

This entry is part 4 of 91 in the series Toward Noon: 3verses

 

The sound of porcupine teeth
in the oak’s crown,
as lethal as mistletoe.

Ahead of me on the path,
the tracks of three deer
braiding and unbraiding.

I reach inside my coat
and find a twig. It’s happening
sooner than I thought.

Posted on January 28, 2014February 4, 2014 by Dave Bonta

Walking the line

This entry is part 5 of 91 in the series Toward Noon: 3verses

 

High winds. I press an ear
to the trunk of a ridge-top oak
and hear nothing but wind.

My footprints in the snow
are more than erased;
they’re raised up, scattered like ashes.

The woodpecker must hear any sound
an oak can make.
It taps out a response.

Posted on January 29, 2014February 4, 2014 by Dave Bonta

Gospel

This entry is part 6 of 91 in the series Toward Noon: 3verses

 

Five below zero.
The stream bank is garlanded
with flowers of frost.

The dogmatic drone
of a single-prop plane,
its cross-shaped silhouette.

The sky is blue as a bruise.
My lungs ache
just from trying to breathe.

Posted on January 30, 2014February 4, 2014 by Dave Bonta

Wildstyle

This entry is part 7 of 91 in the series Toward Noon: 3verses

 

On a low mound in the woods,
two coyotes have left
overlapping turds—

like graffiti tags
made of mouse hair
and small bones.

I follow their tracks.
They diverge in an old clearcut
choked with tree-of-heaven.

Posted on January 31, 2014February 4, 2014 by Dave Bonta

Close to home

This entry is part 8 of 91 in the series Toward Noon: 3verses

 

All this time,
six well-used deer beds
just out of sight from the porch!

The old outhouse
half-fallen into its hole—
how long has the roof been gone?

Even the snowy hillside,
the way it bends the trees’
harp-string shadows…

Posted on February 1, 2014February 4, 2014 by Dave Bonta

Lay of the land

This entry is part 9 of 91 in the series Toward Noon: 3verses

 

The long, low ridges
in the blue distance are edged
with bands of yellow.

Otherwise, the clouds
are heavy as an old
wool blanket.

I pull the shades for a nap,
a wakeful woodchuck thumping
under my floor.

Posted on February 2, 2014February 4, 2014 by Dave Bonta

Primary school

This entry is part 10 of 91 in the series Toward Noon: 3verses

 

Children in the woods:
at first I mistake their distant yelps
for coyotes.

When did I stop climbing trees?
Views are best when seasoned
with a little terror.

Once I found a dead cicada,
stuck half-way out
of its former self.

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How can we live without the unknown before us?   —Rene Char

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About

Via Negativa is a unique experiment in daily, poetic conversation with the living and the dead. Dave Bonta founded the site in 2003 and Luisa A. Igloria joined in 2010. Guest authors contribute as well. Dave writes daily erasure poems to discover the poetry hidden in the Diary of Samuel Pepys. Luisa has been writing and posting a poem a day since November 2010, often in response to Dave’s entries at The Morning Porch. Collections of poems first published at Via Negativa include Luisa’s The Buddha Wonders if She is Having a Mid-Life Crisis and Ode to the Heart Smaller than a Pencil Eraser, and Dave’s Ice Mountain and Breakdown: Banjo Poems. Read more…

Authors

Recent Posts

  • Homebody
  • Estrangement
  • Paperwork
  • Fabulous
  • Deus Ex Machina
  • Self-preservation
  • Uncommitted
  • Prodigals
  • More: A Cento
  • Equinox
  • Composure
  • Transient House
  • Co-dependent
  • Algorithmic
  • Respite

Series

  • Poetry Blog Digest
  • Pandemic Year: a haibun video log
  • Poetry from the Other Americas: a group translation project
  • Une Semaine de Bonté: poems in response to collages by Max Ernst
  • Laura Kaminski's Laundry Poems
  • Louise Labé: translations and responses by Jean Morris
  • Chance: A Poetic Tarot by Luisa Igloria
  • Pepys Diary erasure project
  • Manual: absurd answers to simple questions
  • Poetics and technology (as seen by a bunch of bloggers)
  • Ridge and Valley: an exchange of poems with Todd Davis
  • The Temptations of Solitude: poems in response to paintings by Clive Hicks-Jenkins
  • Wildflower poems: poems in response to macro photos by Jennifer Schlick
  • Honduran poetry: new translations
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