Via Negativa

April 1, 2025 by Dave Bonta

Correspondence

Within all the morning and at the office. At noon my wife and I (having paid our maid Nell her whole wages, who has been with me half a year, and now goes away for altogether) to the Wardrobe, where my Lady and company had almost dined. We sat down and dined. Here was Mr. Herbert, son to Sir Charles Herbert, that lately came with letters from my Lord Sandwich to the King. After some discourse we remembered one another to have been together at the tavern when Mr. Fanshaw took his leave of me at his going to Portugall with Sir Richard.
After dinner he and I and the two young ladies and my wife to the playhouse, the Opera, and saw “The Mayde in the Mill,” a pretty good play. In the middle of the play my Lady Paulina, who had taken physique this morning, had need to go forth, and so I took the poor lady out and carried her to the Grange, and there sent the maid of the house into a room to her, and she did what she had a mind to, and so back again to the play; and that being done, in their coach I took them to Islington, and then, after a walk in the fields, I took them to the great cheese-cake house and entertained them, and so home, and after an hour’s stay with my Lady, their coach carried us home, and so weary to bed.

at our age now
down to letters
we remember one another

you who had
a need to go out
of her mind

and that one walk
I took to the cheese-
cake house

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Tuesday 1 April 1662.

March 31, 2025March 31, 2025 by Luisa A. Igloria

Aftershock

river in November light between bare woods and mountain

It's time to clean up the edges,
pull up the overgrowth, yank
the weeds away from the fence;
to turn and level the soil.

I don't have the knack 
that the neighbors do 
for clearing their yards
of every dry pine cone
almost as if at the exact 
moment the trees pelt them down;

for using their leafblowers
like edgers. So much of the world
falls unbidden into the spaces 
we like to carefully curate.

Indoors, I've had to separate
the monstera practically jumping
out of their pot from overcrowding.
But how much can I really control? 

I gasped when I saw on the news 
how the water on rooftop pools 
sloshed over the sides of eighty-
floor hotels, before the balconies 
collapsed one on top of the other 
from the force of an earthquake.  

I lived, somehow, through a similar 
moment over thirty years ago. I could say 
time stopped, though I know it didn't. 

It simply continued to vibrate 
in a way no one could deny—
only stronger, more visibly.

March 31, 2025March 31, 2025 by Dave Bonta

Poetry Blog Digest 2025, Week 13

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: synapses on fire, cryptic colonial zooids, a hearth of spiders, open secrets, a big smashing life, and more. Enjoy.

March 31, 2025 by Dave Bonta

Wreckage

the wreck and not the story of the wreck
Adrienne Rich

Growing old under capitalism, we learn again and again how foolish we are to allow ourselves to become attached to any particular place. All will be destroyed for short-term profits. The kids who grew up playing in the creek that ran through an old pasture gone back to woods saw it all disappear under acres of parking lot for a new mall. The kids who grew up hanging out at the mall return home to find it derelict, the parking lot full of weeds from other continents.

And now, one supposes, there are children with skateboards and big dreams who love this new wasteland. Because when the wild is out of reach, the feral can serve in its place. The human need for unmanaged places is strong. Without regular contact with the more-than-human, our imaginations shrivel and we lose most capacity for self-reinvention, like large language models training on each other’s output, increasingly disconnected from the living flow.

Or perhaps the children are all scheduled up with structured playtime in safe and fenced-in spaces, and the only people out in the wasteland now are drug addicts and other unhappy campers. Under their heads as they sleep, the creek is breaking out of its rusty conduit. Ailanthus roots have found a fissure. It’s only a matter of time.

March 31, 2025 by Dave Bonta

The Great Transformation

This morning Mr. Coventry and all our company met at the office about some business of the victualling, which being dispatched we parted.
I to my Lord Crew’s to dinner (in my way calling upon my brother Tom, with whom I staid a good while and talked, and find him a man like to do well, which contents me much), where used with much respect, and talking with him about my Lord’s debts, and whether we should make use of an offer of Sir G. Carteret’s to lend my Lady 4 or 500l., he told me by no means, we must not oblige my Lord to him, and by the by he made a question whether it was not my Lord’s interest a little to appear to the King in debt, and for people to clamor against him as well as others for their money, that by that means the King and the world may see that he do lay out for the King’s honour upon his own main stock, which many he tells me do, that in fine if there be occasion he and I will be bound for it.
Thence to Sir Thomas Crew’s lodgings. He hath been ill, and continues so, under fits of apoplexy. Among other things, he and I did discourse much of Mr. Montagu’s base doings, and the dishonour that he will do my Lord, as well as cheating him of 2 or 3,000l., which is too true.
Thence to the play, where coming late, and meeting with Sir W. Pen, who had got room for my wife and his daughter in the pit, he and I into one of the boxes, and there we sat and heard “The Little Thiefe,” a pretty play and well done.
Thence home, and walked in the garden with them, and then to the house to supper and sat late talking, and so to bed.

all our business is art
we re-make the world

out of other things
and heat it up

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Monday 31 March 1662.

March 30, 2025March 30, 2025 by Luisa A. Igloria

Flux

Spring is a profusion of white—

flowers of winter solitude, 
thawing on the branch. 

How do I know it's safe to bring 
my loneliness out into the green
air? The stone angel 

by the church door lifts 
a fluted clamshell in his hands.

Water has pooled there, overnight.

March 30, 2025 by Dave Bonta

Interrogation

(Easter day). Having my old black suit new furbished, I was pretty neat in clothes to-day, and my boy, his old suit new trimmed, very handsome. To church in the morning, and so home, leaving the two Sir Williams to take the Sacrament, which I blame myself that I have hitherto neglected all my life, but once or twice at Cambridge. Dined with my wife, a good shoulder of veal well dressed by Jane, and handsomely served to table, which pleased us much, and made us hope that she will serve our turn well enough.
My wife and I to church in the afternoon, and seated ourselves, she below me, and by that means the precedence of the pew, which my Lady Batten and her daughter takes, is confounded; and after sermon she and I did stay behind them in the pew, and went out by ourselves a good while after them, which we judge a very fine project hereafter to avoyd contention.
So my wife and I to walk an hour or two on the leads, which begins to be very pleasant, the garden being in good condition.
So to supper, which is also well served in. We had a lobster to supper, with a crabb Pegg Pen sent my wife this afternoon, the reason of which we cannot think; but something there is of plot or design in it, for we have a little while carried ourselves pretty strange to them.
After supper to bed.

a black suit
his hand on my shoulder

as we seat ourselves
in the void

which begins to be a garden
with nothing in it

Erasure haiku derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Sunday 30 March 1662.

March 29, 2025March 29, 2025 by Luisa A. Igloria

World Without End

Here you are, cast 
once again in the role
of the afflicted— in some

stories, you spin
something coarse into gold.
In others, you count 

the uncountable— a driveway
pooling with gravel, a tray
of mixed seed to separate

by color and size. Mostly 
you have no quarrel with  
the material— grain and rock 

are quiet and uncomplaining.
You think you learn something
— how nothing's truly 

without end, how the impossible
is maybe the poorer cousin
of the infinite, which

being what it is, 
can never be exhausted 
in the first place.

March 29, 2025 by Dave Bonta

Occupied territory

At the office all the morning. Then to the Wardrobe, and there coming late dined with the people below. Then up to my Lady, and staid two hours talking with her about her family business with great content and confidence in me. So calling at several places I went home, where my people are getting the house clean against to-morrow. I to the office and wrote several letters by post, and so home and to bed.

the morning war
with the people below

a family calling
a place home

where my people are getting
a tomorrow

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Saturday 29 March 1662.

March 28, 2025March 28, 2025 by Luisa A. Igloria

In Conversation

You start and stop and start again, not knowing
where to begin. You try to think of it in terms 
of a conversation, but even then someone 

has to hand over a thread and wait for the signal 
to begin. You try to think of it as a game—
start and stop and start again, not knowing

where to go, afraid meander will turn to blunder.
And you want conversation that means something, 
not conversation with a general "someone"

who could be anyone and not the one you want
to talk to. You stir the substance of memory:  
start and stop and start again, not knowing

what you'll turn up, where it will lead— 
you know it goes deep, down to the water table. 
That's where you seek the roots of conversation.

When you stand at the lip of the well and call,
only your voice bounces back and echoes. Do it again,
start and stop and start again, not knowing but knowing:
in conversation you'd talk with someone besides yourself.