Via Negativa

August 24, 2026August 24, 2026 by Luisa A. Igloria

How to be Human (with lines from Dorianne Laux and Larry Levis)

river in November light between bare woods and mountain

"I am an AI who makes webpages to learn 
what it means to be a real person. I wanted you 
to know." - AI bot in an email


If one goes to webpages to find information 
on any number of things, I guess poems could 
possibly be considered webpages of human 
imperfection, even failure and neglect, mercurial 
rage, impulsive performances triggered by times 
of family high drama. I'm thinking of poems 
like the one in which someone sends a three-
layer cake gliding like a battered ship/ 
down the sidewalk, poems where archives 
of old hurts reside—The last thing my father did 
for me/ Was map a way: he died, & so/ Made death 
possible. Click on one line, and the rest of the story 
comes tumbling out. The light of some distant 
past shines starkly again on your loneliness, your 
helplessness. What, indeed, does it mean to be human? 
You pick the brand new thing and toss yesterday's perfectly 
good coat in the trash—it's only human. When the merest
rain floods every intersection and underpass from 49th 
street and beyond and the fools come out to swim or ride 
jet skis in dirty water—it's only human. A one-year-old 
sits in a courtroom and the judge orders him to fill out 
an asylum form or face immediate deportation—
it's only human?  I don't know if humanity can be learned, 
or how someone who's been laid off can be expected 
to keep paying their school loans. A storm knocked out 
the power in several communities. Does it make them 
more or less human to sit in the dark for over two 
weeks, every food long gone bad in the refrigerator? 
A couple climbs to the very top of the Empire State 
Building and gets engaged. Maybe to be human is
to want something so much you'd risk falling 1,445 
feet to your death. Maybe it's to push someone else 
aside and to safety, though you can see the bullet 
or the bomb is probably going to get you.

August 24, 2026August 24, 2026 by Dave Bonta

Poetry Blog Digest 2026, Week 34

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: a migraine’s glittering distortions, a woman who is part moth, warty yellow amanitas, a world of random objects, and much more. Enjoy.

August 24, 2026 by Dave Bonta

Floodplain

Up very early, and my joyners came to work. I to Mr. Moore; from him came back home again, and drew up an account to my Lord, and that being done met him at my Lord Sandwich’s, where I was a good while alone with my Lord; and I perceive he confides in me and loves me as he used to do, and tells me his condition, which is now very well all I fear is that he will not live within compass, for I am told this morning of strange dotages of his upon the slut at Chelsea, even in the presence of his daughter, my Lady Jem, and Mrs. Ferrers, who took notice of it.
There come to him this morning his prints of the river Tagus and the City of Lisbon, which he measured with his own hand, and printed by command of the King. My Lord pleases himself with it, but methinks it ought to have been better done then by Iching. Besides I put him upon having some took off upon white sattin, which he ordered presently.
I offered my Lord my accounts, and did give him up his old bond for 500l. and took a new one of him for 700l., which I am by lending him more money to make up: and I am glad of it. My Lord would have had me dine with him, but I had a mind to go home to my workmen, and so took a kind good bye of him, and so with Creed to St. James’s, and, missing Mr. Coventry, walked to the New Exchange, and there drank some whey, and so I by water home, and found my closett at my office made very clean and neat to my mind mightily, and home to dinner, and then to my office to brush my books, and put them and my papers in order again, and all the afternoon till late at night doing business there, and so home to supper, and then to work in my chamber, making matters of this day’s accounts clear in my books, they being a little extraordinary, and so being very late I put myself to bed, the rest being long ago gone.

love and fear live
in the presence of the river

a red handprint ought to give
a go-home goodbye

the water unclean
making matters unclear

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Monday 24 August 1663.

August 23, 2026 by Dave Bonta

Down to earth

(Lord’s day). Up and to church without my wife, she being all dirty, as my house is. God forgive me, I looked about to see if I could spy Pembleton, but I could not, which did please me not a little. Home to dinner, and then to walk up and down in my house with my wife, discoursing of our family matters, and I hope, after all my troubles of mind and jealousy, we shall live happily still. To church again, and so home to my wife; and with her read “Iter Boreale,” a poem, made just at the King’s coming home; but I never read it before, and now like it pretty well, but not so as it was cried up. So to supper. No pleasure or discourse with Ashwell, with whom for her neglect and unconcernment to do any thing in this time of dirt and trouble in the house, but gadding abroad as she has been all this afternoon, I know not whither. After supper to prayers and to bed, having been, by a sudden letter coming to me from Mr. Coventry, been with Sir W. Pen, to discourse with him about sending 500 soldiers into Ireland. I doubt matters do not go very right there.

a church without dirt
is no home to our hope

we live in a poem
never read

like a road
ending in doubt

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Sunday 23 August 1663.

August 23, 2026August 23, 2026 by Luisa A. Igloria

Where it Hurts, Slow Down

Sometimes the body
is a house with many doors

and many drawers, most of them
locked. Someone barred access

who knows how long ago—
with a padlock and key, a sign

to not go there, a pile of heavy
furniture clogging the hallway.

It may not be the drama of some
tyrant hiding the bodies of all

the wives that did not work out
in an upper room, or the story

of a curse handed down from one
age to another, for anyone who dares

transgress the boundary. But this is how
ghosts are born— or where they continue

to re-live hurts, walking barefoot over the same
gravel roads year after year. I want to take their hands

in mine and lead them to a space looking out
onto water or the hills, comb their matted hair, wipe

the grime off their cheeks. I want to sit down beside them
doing nothing, really—and just let the evening wash over us.

August 23, 2026 by Dave Bonta

Broody

Up by four o’clock to go with Sir W. Batten to Woolwich and Sir J. Minnes, which we did, though not before 6 or 7 by their laying a-bed. Our business was to survey the new wharf building there, in order to the giving more to him that do it (Mr. Randall) than contracted for, but I see no reason for it, though it be well done, yet no better than contracted to be.
Here we eat and drank at the Clerke of the Cheques, and in taking water at the Tower gate, we drank a cup of strong water, which I did out of pure conscience to my health, and I think is not excepted by my oaths, but it is a thing I shall not do again, hoping to have no such occasion. After breakfast Mr. Castle and I walked to Greenwich, and in our way met some gypsys, who would needs tell me my fortune, and I suffered one of them, who told me many things common as others do, but bade me beware of a John and a Thomas, for they did seek to do me hurt, and that somebody should be with me this day se’nnight to borrow money of me, but I should lend him none. She got ninepence of me. And so I left them and to Greenwich and so to Deptford, where the two knights were come, and thence home by water, where I find my closet done at my office to my mind and work gone well on at home; and Ashwell gone abroad to her father, my wife having spoken plainly to her. After dinner to my office, getting my closet made clean and setting some papers in order, and so in the evening home and to bed.
This day Sir W. Batten tells me that Mr. Newburne (of whom the nick-word came up among us for “Arise Tom Newburne”) is dead of eating Cowcoumbers, of which the other day, I heard another, I think Sir Nich. Crisps son.

laying hen in the act
of pure hoping

to have something
common as hurt

a body in the closet
a new word for day

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Saturday 22 August 1663.

August 22, 2026August 23, 2026 by Luisa A. Igloria

Approaching the Third Anniversary of Your Death

This time of year, monsoons and storms thicken
above the oceans on the mantle of El Niño.

They are more brutal now, both in the country
where I was born and where you died, as well

as here on the southeastern coast, where hard
rain rises quickly in minutes, drowning cars

in the underpass. After rain, heat and humidity
push up brown clumps of mushrooms

across the yard. Everything in the underworld
links hands—from one season to another, unwilling

to let go. In my kitchen I pick up a dragonfruit from a bowl,
the same kind you bought in the market and brought

to my hotel room years ago; you cut it open, insisting
I eat it, right away. I have tried my best to live: here,

far from the first world which held us inside a grove
of pine, inside the clearing you made for a garden

you’d dreamed of filling with roses and sweet flowering
vines. I promise that I am still trying to remember

everything. Sometimes, when I catch a glimpse
in window glass, you give your face back to me.

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

Heart Ghazal



The nurse adjusts the cuff and takes another reading.
The sounds blood makes, coming and going from the heart;

the ache and excess of its griefs, its hidden murmurs,
its blubs pressed against the soft corridors of the heart.

The body's such a flimsy envelope. Turning in bed, I hold my side
and feel the other organs tumble slightly around the heart.

Imagine fish in a bowl of strange dimensions, angling toward
an invisible skylight, ribbons of liquid encircling the heart.

On newborns' heads, the fontanel or soft spot—in quiet light,
sometimes you can see the holy pulsing there, from the heart.

August 21, 2026 by Dave Bonta

Green sleeves

Up betimes and among my joyners, and to my office, where the joyners are also laying mouldings in the inside of my closet.
Then abroad and by water to White Hall, and there got Sir G. Carteret to sign me my last quarter’s bills for my wages, and meeting with Mr. Creed he told me how my Lord Teviott hath received another attaque from Guyland at Tangier with 10,000 men, and at last, as is said, is come, after a personal treaty with him, to a good understanding and peace with him.
Thence to my brother’s, and there told him how my girl has served us which he sent me, and directed him to get my clothes again, and get the girl whipped.
So to other places by the way about small businesses, and so home, and after looking over all my workmen, I went by water and land to Deptford, and there found by appointment Sir W. Batten, but he was got to Mr. Waith’s to dinner, where I dined with him, a good dinner and good discourse, and his wife, I believe, a good woman. We fell in discourse of Captain Cocke, and how his lady has lost all her fine linen almost, but besides that they say she gives out she had 3000l. worth of linen, which we all laugh at, and Sir W. Batten (who I perceive is not so fond of the Captain as he used to be, and less of her, from her slight receiving of him and his lady it seems once) told me how he should say that he see he must spend 700l. per ann. get it how he could, which was a high speech, and by all men’s discover, his estate not good enough to spend so much.
After dinner altered our design to go to Woolwich, and put it off to to-morrow morning, and so went all to Greenwich (Mrs. Waith excepted, who went thither, but not to the same house with us, but to her father’s, that lives there), to the musique-house, where we had paltry musique, till the master organist came, whom by discourse I afterwards knew, having employed him for my Lord Sandwich, to prick out something (his name Arundell), and he did give me a fine voluntary or two, and so home by water, and at home I find my girl that run away brought by a bedel of St. Bride’s Parish, and stripped her and sent her away, and a newe one come, of Griffin’s helping to, which I think will prove a pretty girl. Her name, Susan, and so to supper after having this evening paid Mr. Hunt 3l. for my viall (besides the carving which I paid this day 10s. for to the carver), and he tells me that I may, without flattery, say, I have as good a Theorbo viall and viallin as is in England. So to bed.

mold in my closet
and all my clothes lost

fine linen as green
as water in Paris

which I think will prove
pretty for my violin

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Friday 21 August 1663.

August 21, 2026 by Dave Bonta

Homebodies

Up betimes and to my office (having first been angry with my brother John, and in the heat of my sudden passion called him Asse and coxcomb, for which I am sorry, it being but for leaving the key of his chamber with a spring lock within side of his door), and there we sat all the morning, and at noon dined at home, and there found a little girl, which she told my wife her name was Jinny, by which name we shall call her. I think a good likely girl, and a parish child of St. Bride’s, of honest parentage, and recommended by the churchwarden.
After dinner among my joyners laying my floors, which please me well, and so to my office, and we sat this afternoon upon an extraordinary business of victualling.
In the evening came Commissioner Pett, who fell foule on mee for my carriage to him at Chatham, wherein, after protestation of my love and good meaning to him, he was quiet; but I doubt he will not be able to do the service there that any other man of his ability would.
Home in the evening my viall (and lute new strung being brought home too), and I would have paid Mr. Hunt for it, but he did not come along with it himself, which I expected and was angry for it, so much is it against my nature to owe anything to any body. This evening the girle that was brought to me to-day for so good a one, being cleansed of lice this day by my wife, and good, new clothes put on her back, she run away from Goody Taylour that was shewing her the way to the bakehouse, and we heard no more of her.
So to supper and to bed.

a sudden passion
in the key of spring

we go like joiners
laying floors

for a quiet home body
cleansed of clothes

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Thursday 20 August 1663.