Via Negativa

July 22, 2026July 22, 2026 by Luisa A. Igloria

And so lay long in the morning, till I heard people knock at my door, and I took it to be about 8 o’clock (but afterwards found myself a little mistaken), and so I rose and ranted at Will and the maid, and swore I could find my heart to kick them down stairs, which the maid mumbled at mightily. It was my brother, who staid and talked with me, his chief business being about his going about to build his house new at the top, which will be a great charge for him, and above his judgment.
By and by comes Mr. Deane, of Woolwich, with his draught of a ship, and the bend and main lines in the body of a ship very finely, and which do please me mightily, and so am resolved to study hard, and learn of him to understand a body, and I find him a very pretty fellow in it, and rational, but a little conceited, but that’s no matter to me. At noon, by my Lady Batten’s desire, I went over the water to Mr. Castle’s, who brings his wife home to his own house to-day, where I found a great many good old women, and my Lady, Sir W. Batten, and Sir J. Minnes.
A good, handsome, plain dinner, and then walked in the garden; which is pleasant enough, more than I expected there, and so Sir J. Minnes, Sir W. Batten, and I by water to the office, and there sat, and then I by water to the Temple about my law business, and back again home and wrote letters to my father and wife about my desire that they should observe the feast at Brampton, and have my Lady and the family, and so home to supper and bed, my head aching all the day from my last night’s bad rest, and yesterday’s distempering myself with over walking, and to-day knocking my head against a low door in Mr. Castle’s house.
This day the Parliament kept a fast for the present unseasonable weather.

a morning to go out
of line

body in a body
of water

temple tempering
my head

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Tuesday 21 July 1663.

July 21, 2026July 21, 2026 by Luisa A. Igloria

Making Meaning

river in November light between bare woods and mountain

Where do we get the tendency to look for symbols 
when perhaps sometimes the thing is only itself 
and not some larger or more universal meaning?
The blackbird that lights on the topmost branch
of the fig tree may simply be resting and not 
bearing messages from the dead. The flimsy
petals of crepe myrtle that stick to my hair every
time I navigate the short walk from the sidewalk
to the car may only mean it's time to call the city 
for pruning services, and not confetti from the gods.
We find a penny on the edge of the doormat, 
and naturally we want to pick it up for luck. Ants
form a wavering but determined line from the window-
sill to the counter. In a bowl, a pear is starting to bruise
softly in its bronze-colored jacket, and I recall
the dark spot on my father's left hand. Who called 
to what, and who answered? Everywhere I walk,
it seems there's a thread I can pull on, attached 
to a picture hiding in plain sight. I know I want
to be addressed, to feel some kind of touch
which I might find reassuring. But the dark, 
glossy sheen of bird feathers, the speckled 
rind on fruit and the sugar beginning to foam
out of its pores can be presence enough. Not 
certainty, just the briefest mark of grounding.

July 21, 2026 by Dave Bonta

Plastic bag

Up and to my office, and then walked to Woolwich, reading Bacon’s “Faber fortunae,” which the oftener I read the more I admire. There found Captain Cocke, and up and down to many places to look after matters, and so walked back again with him to his house, and there dined very finely. With much ado obtained an excuse from drinking of wine, and did only taste a drop of Sack which he had for his lady, who is, he fears, a little consumptive, and her beauty begins to want its colour. It was Malago Sack, which, he says, is certainly 30 years old, and I tasted a drop of it, and it was excellent wine, like a spirit rather than wine.
Thence by water to the office, and taking some papers by water to White Hall and St. James’s, but there being no meeting with the Duke to-day, I returned by water and down to Greenwich, to look after some blocks that I saw a load carried off by a cart from Woolwich, the King’s Yard. But I could not find them, and so returned, and being heartily weary I made haste to bed, and being in bed made Will read and construe three or four Latin verses in the Bible, and chide him for forgetting his grammar. So to sleep, and sleep ill all the night, being so weary, and feverish with it.

up and down
to many places

a sack which begins
to want its color

a sack which is years old
and like a spirit

carried off and returned
forgetting to sleep

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Monday 20 July 1663.

July 20, 2026July 20, 2026 by Luisa A. Igloria

Coincidence

At a lunch gathering, two friends tell
of how their parents knew each other 
from having played tennis doubles. 
They knew each other's parents back 
then, when they were children in 
ruffled socks and patent leather shoes. 
But as with most everything, that part 
of their lives veered off in other directions. 
Then one day, decades later, these two 
(now past middle age, walking the same 
college hallways), saw the faded sports 
logo on a tote or a sweatshirt and froze 
in the instant of recall: the thwack of balls 
bouncing on synthetic turf, sycamore trees 
at the edge of the courts, screams of children 
at a nearby park. We call it chance, but what if 
coincidence is merely the long garment of time 
revealing a secret pocket? What if a ball lobbed 
one long morning ago into the air has been traveling
toward this moment, before falling into the open
hand of recognition? In the Poetics, Aristotle said 
a likely impossibility is preferable to an unlikely
possibility. We shake our heads but smile.
There's no need to explain the complicated 
patterns made by the shadow of leaves 
as sunlight passes through them: how they
will slant toward the south-facing wall 
at dusk, before dissolving into themselves.

July 20, 2026July 20, 2026 by Dave Bonta

Poetry Blog Digest 2026, Week 29

A personal selection of posts from around the Anglophone blogosphere, including Substack, with a commitment to following a somewhat haphazardly chosen selection of poets, poetry lovers, literary critics and publishers over time. 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: wildly latticing light, hot jets of horse breath, a ropey ladder down to oblivion, and much more. Enjoy.

July 20, 2026 by Dave Bonta

Doctored

(Lord’s day). Lay very long in pleasant dreams till Church time, and so up, and it being foul weather so that I cannot walk as I intended to meet my Cozen Roger at Thomas Pepys’s house (whither he rode last night), to Hatcham, I went to church, where a sober Doctor made a good sermon. So home to dinner alone, and then to read a little, and so to church again, where the Scot made an ordinary sermon, and so home to my office, and there read over my vows and increased them by a vow against all strong drink till November next of any sort or quantity, by which I shall try how I can forbear it. God send it may not prejudice my health, and then I care not. Then I fell to read over a silly play writ by a person of honour (which is, I find, as much as to say a coxcomb), called “Love a la Mode”.
And that being ended, home, and played on my lute and sung psalms till bedtime, then to prayers and to bed.

in a dream
a doctor made me
ordinary again

till I fell ill
in love
till bedtime prayers

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Sunday 19 July 1663.

July 19, 2026July 19, 2026 by Luisa A. Igloria

Giving it All Up

A famous singer's longtime  guitarist 
just released his first solo album. He's in 
his seventies, spent decades inside
someone else's songs, providing 
the opening riffs, the endings. Perhaps 
it's unsurprising that words like end 
or beginning grow soft with time. 
In a radio interview, he talks about
waking up one morning, wanting to open
another door, follow where it leads  Once 
I may have thought that starting over 
meant burning things down, throwing 
other things away, leaving only the bleached 
sheen of floorboards. At the end of this street
that people call a dead end with no outlet, 
the river is just humming to itself. In some 
front yards the grass is freshly trimmed, 
and in others the green is long-haired, 
even defiant. And time itself is a room 
inside of which we continue trying on outfits, 
arrangements, stacking and restacking cups 
and dishes, wiping dust off headboards, shining 
the silver; sorting the trash from recyclables,
vowing not to speak to each other ever again.
Perhaps things that stop or vanish haven't really 
gone into the dark, but into a freedom I'm being asked 
to consider, though I don't understand completely—
Even the hero is told to lash himself to a raft,
surrender to the water and to the fickle gods
who request sacrifice, and then like stars  
release a little light from a great distance.

July 19, 2026 by Dave Bonta

Manual

Up and to my office, where all the morning, and Sir J. Minnes and I did a little, and but a little business at the office. So I eat a bit of victuals at home, and so abroad to several places, as my bookseller’s, and then to Thomson the instrument maker’s to bespeak a ruler for my pocket for timber, &c., which I believe he will do to my mind. So to the Temple, Wardrobe, and lastly to Westminster Hall, where I expected some bands made me by Mrs. Lane, and while she went to the starchers for them, I staid at Mrs. Howlett’s, who with her husband were abroad, and only their daughter (which I call my wife) was in the shop, and I took occasion to buy a pair of gloves to talk to her, and I find her a pretty spoken girl, and will prove a mighty handsome wench. I could love her very well.
By and by Mrs. Lane comes, and my bands not being done she and I posted and met at the Crown in the Palace Yard, where we eat a chicken I sent for, and drank, and were mighty merry, and I had my full liberty of towzing her and doing what I would, but the last thing of all; for I felt as much as I would and made her feel my thing also, and put the end of it to her breast and by and by to her very belly — of which I am heartily ashamed. But I do resolve never to do more so.
But, Lord! to see what a mind she has to a husband, and how she showed me her hands to tell her her fortune, and every thing that she asked ended always whom and when she was to marry. And I pleased her so well, saying as I know she would have me, and then she would say that she had been with all the artists in town, and they always told her the same things, as that she should live long, and rich, and have a good husband, but few children, and a great fit of sickness, and 20 other things, which she says she has always been told by others.
Here I staid late before my bands were done, and then they came, and so I by water to the Temple, and thence walked home, all in a sweat with my tumbling of her and walking, and so a little supper and to bed, fearful of having taken cold.

the instrument maker’s
daughter loves
to talk to her hands

full of doing
and a feel for art

they should have children
and 20 other ways
to be one

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Saturday 18 July 1663.

July 18, 2026July 17, 2026 by Luisa A. Igloria

Hometown

- after Larry Levis

Of his boyhood bathed in dust
and vines, a poet wrote: A life like that? 
It seemed to go on forever— Labor in fields 
and orchards, hours in the bland hallways 

of school followed by nights as seasons 
changed from one currency to another.
If I lean hard into the pocket of air 
right by my cheek, I can hear 

the gurgle of frogs beneath the vegetable 
plots, the sharp scouring of wet driveways 
by aunts armed with stiff-bristled brooms. 
I also want to say I was happy then, pulling 

chayote off a trellis covered with tendrils
like old telephone coils, lighting a spiral 
of Elephant katol in its clay dish before 
inhaling its eucalyptus fume. When

did frost scald rows of cabbages,
wilting them leaf to bone? In church,
on Sundays a priest in robes of silk
dipped bayabas branches 

into an urn of water and shook
droplets over our bowed heads.
Sometimes doves flew in from 
the parking lot and hovered

in the vaulted ceiling. Cool
marble of tile underfoot. Votives
that we knew would flicker out
when flame hit the empty pans.