Via Negativa

August 17, 2026August 17, 2026 by Dave Bonta

Poetry Blog Digest 2026, Week 33

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 bowl of heat, the musicality of machines, an Emily Dickinson pilgrimage, the slow rebuilding of the world, and much more. Enjoy.

August 17, 2026August 17, 2026 by Luisa A. Igloria

Dividing by Zero

river in November light between bare woods and mountain

"It was the only life I had." ~ Jane Kenyon

Carrots and cabbages 
dumped on the side of the mountain
road, because the farmers can't 
afford to transport them 
to market.

Such overflow of 
abundance, in these days
holding mostly rain. This remainder,
not even subtracted from itself, 
and still it comes to nought.

August 16, 2026 by Dave Bonta

No retreat

(Lord’s day). Up and with my wife to church, and finding her desirous to go to church, I did suspect her meeting of Pembleton, but he was not there, and so I thought my jealousy in vain, and treat the sermon with great quiet. And home to dinner very pleasant, only, some angry words my wife could not forbear to give Ashwell, and after dinner to church again, and there, looking up and down, I found Pembleton to stand in the isle against us, he coming too late to get a pew. Which, Lord! into what a sweat did it put me! I do not think my wife did see him, which did a little satisfy me. But it makes me mad to see of what a jealous temper I am and cannot helpe it, though let him do what he can I do not see, as I am going to reduce my family, what hurt he can do me, there being no more occasion now for my wife to learn of him.
Here preached a confident young coxcomb. So home, and I staid a while with Sir J. Minnes, at Mrs. Turner’s, hearing his parrat talk, laugh, and crow, which it do to admiration. So home and with my wife to see Sir W. Pen, and thence to my uncle Wight, and took him at supper and sat down, where methinks my uncle is more kind than he used to be both to me now, and my father tell me to him also, which I am glad at.
After supper home, it being extraordinary dark, and by chance a lanthorn came by, and so we hired it to light us home, otherwise were we no sooner within doors but a great showre fell that had doused us cruelly if we had not been within, it being as dark as pitch.
So to prayers and to bed.

finding quiet on some isle
to reduce hurt into ache
is parrot talk

a crow is more kind
to be both dark
and a horn

ditto with a great shower
that doused us
in prayer

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Sunday 16 August 1663.

August 16, 2026 by Dave Bonta

Idol

Lay pretty long in bed, being a little troubled with some pain got by wind and cold, and so up with good peace of mind, hoping that my wife will mind her house and servants, and so to the office, and being too soon to sit walked to my viall, which is well nigh done, and I believe I may have it home to my mind next week. So back to my office, and there we sat all the morning, I till 2 o’clock before I could go to dinner again.
After dinner walked forth to my instrument maker, and there had my rule he made me lay now so perfected, that I think in all points I have never need or desire a better, or think that any man yet had one so good in all the several points of it for my use. So by water down to Deptford, taking into my boat with me Mr. Palmer, one whom I knew and his wife when I was first married, being an acquaintance of my wife’s and her friends lodging at Charing Cross during our differences. He joyed me in my condition, and himself it seems is forced to follow the law in a common ordinary way, but seems to do well, and is a sober man, enough by his discourse. He landed with me at Deptford, where he saw by the officers’ respect to me a piece of my command, and took notice of it, though God knows I hope I shall not be elated with that, but rather desire to be known for serving the King well, and doing my duty.
He gone I walked up and down the yard a while discoursing with the officers, and so by water home meditating on my new Rule with great pleasure. So to my office, and there by candle light doing business, and so home to supper and to bed.

a little ingot of mind
I believe
may have a maker

I never desire better
for water or a boat

an ordinary piece of God
to go off
to light up

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Saturday 15 August 1663.

August 16, 2026August 16, 2026 by Luisa A. Igloria

Witness

~ after “Who Opened the Window,” Jessica Damen

It looks like an ordinary room. Perhaps a summer
house. No gilt decor, just walls of dirty-looking cream

bordered with green. The humid air moves like an animal
through the trees. You would need to crack a window open

though it would probably not make a difference. A man
in a merino sweater, hand on hip, stands behind a woman

in a chair. She is in middle age, perhaps farther along, but she
wears the look of what some might call good breeding.

Her hand cups her cheek so we can see the diamond
on one finger. This means she is taken. Was taken. Did he

do the taking? His face, turned toward the fourth wall between
us, is bored or indifferent. He’s the kind who takes easily, and

after having taken, runs his fingers through his hair, moving
on to the calculation of the next conquest. On the dinner table,

a pewter samovar and cup; a weighted object in the shape
of a horned, eyeless head. I see another woman there—

but there are two. Just girls, actually. They seem to almost
have the same body, though the one who sits upright has a face

still mostly unshadowed. Her head turns away; she can’t bear
to look too closely. The other has gone pale and limp as the beast

forces his girth into her. From what labyrinth has he fled
extradition, tired of the game of winding thread and waiting for

periodic delivery of sacrifices? A small, yellow-feathered marionette,
mouth agape, is the only seeming witness. Yet it’s enough, isn’t it—

a start? A record is being made here. Not everything can be
erased, though it will take time for their voices to be heard.

August 15, 2026 by Dave Bonta

Division of labor

Awake, and to chide my wife again, and I find that my wife has got too great head to be brought down soon, nor is it possible with any convenience to keep Ashwell longer, my wife is so set and convinced, as she was in Sarah, to make her appear a Lyer in every small thing that we shall have no peace while she stays. So I up and to my office doing several businesses in my study, and so home to dinner. The time having outslipt me and my stomach, it being past, two a-clock, and yet before we could sit down to dinner Mrs. Harper and her cousin Jane came, and we treated and discoursed long about her coming to my wife for a chamber mayd, and I think she will do well. So they went away expecting notice when she shall come, and so we sat down to dinner at four a-clock almost, and then I walked forth to my brother’s, where I found my father very discontented, and has no mind to come to my house, and would have begun some of the differences between my wife and him, but I desired to hear none of them, and am sorry at my folly in forcing it and theirs in not telling me of it at the beginning, and therefore am resolved to make the best of a bad market, and to bring my wife to herself again as soon and as well as I can. So we parted very kindly, and he will dine with me to-morrow or next day. Thence walked home, doing several errands by the way, and at home took my wife to visit Sir W. Pen, who is still lame, and after an hour with him went home and supped, and with great content to bed.

hide my head or we
shall have no peace

study having outslipped
me and my stomach

the clock has no mind
and no kind hour

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Friday 14 August 1663.

August 15, 2026August 14, 2026 by Luisa A. Igloria

Root Ghazal

I filch a sprig of jasmine from a public bush
to set in water, hoping to sprout new roots.

You have to admire the way some plants grow
new parts after division— even sturdier roots.

The garden guides say: sanitize your blades 
before you cut, to encourage clean roots.

If we cut off our limbs we would merely be armless or
legless. To lop off a tail would not grow new roots—

but that's how a lizard escapes. I've changed the soil,
thinned the overgrowth, and aerated the roots. 

Decades now since I decided to make a life here.
Does your heart, too, swing from its nest to its roots?

The tree bears fruit that ripens and swells. What's unpicked
sugars the air, loosens, then plummets back to the roots.

August 14, 2026August 14, 2026 by Dave Bonta

Groundless

Lay long in bed with my wife talking of family matters, and so up and to the office, where we sat all the morning, and then home to dinner, and after dinner my wife and I to talk again about getting of a couple of good mayds and to part with Ashwell, which troubles me for her father’s sake, though I shall be glad to have the charge taken away of keeping a woman. Thence a little to the office, and so abroad with my wife by water to White Hall, and there at my Lord’s lodgings met my Lady Jemimah, with whom we staid a good while. Thence to Mrs. Hunt’s, where I left my wife, and I to walk a little in St. James’s Park, while Mrs. Harper might come home, with whom we came to speak about her kinswoman Jane Gentleman to come and live with us as a chamber mayde, and there met with Mr. Hoole my old acquaintance of Magdalen, and walked with him an hour in the Parke, discoursing chiefly of Sir Samuel Morland, whose lady is gone into France. It seems he buys ground and a farm in the country, and lays out money upon building, and God knows what! so that most of the money he sold his pension of 500l. per annum for, to Sir Arthur Slingsby, is believed is gone. It seems he hath very great promises from the King, and Hoole hath seen some of the King’s letters, under his own hand, to Morland, promising him great things (and among others, the order of the Garter, as Sir Samuel says); but his lady thought it below her to ask any thing at the King’s first coming, believing the King would do it of himself, when as Hoole do really think if he had asked to be Secretary of State at the King’s first coming, he might have had it. And the other day at her going into France, she did speak largely to the King herself, how her husband hath failed of what his Majesty had promised, and she was sure intended him; and the King did promise still, as he is a King and a gentleman, to be as good as his word in a little time, to a tittle: but I never believe it.
Here in the Park I met with Mr. Coventry, where he sent for a letter he had newly writ to me, wherein he had enclosed one from Commissioner Pett complaining of his being defeated in his attempt to suspend two pursers, wherein the manner of his doing it, and complaint of our seeing him (contrary to our promises the other day), deserted, did make us laugh mightily, and was good sport to think how awkwardly he goes about a thing that he has no courage of his own nor mind to do. Mr. Coventry answered it very handsomely, but I perceive Pett has left off his corresponding with me any more.
Thence to fetch my wife from Mrs. Hunt’s, where now he was come in, and we eat and drunk, and so away (their child being at home, a very lively, but not pretty at all), by water to Mrs. Turner’s, and there made a short visit, and so home by coach, and after supper to prayers and to bed, and before going to bed Ashwell began to make her complaint, and by her I do perceive that she has received most base usage from my wife, which my wife sillily denies, but it is impossible the wench could invent words and matter so particularly, against which my wife has nothing to say but flatly to deny, which I am sorry to see, and blows to have past, and high words even at Hinchinbrooke House among my Lady’s people, of which I am mightily ashamed.
I said nothing to either of them, but let them talk till she was gone and left us abed, and then I told my wife my mind with great sobriety of grief, and so to sleep.

I have an old acquaintance
with the ground

and God knows what
to promise the land

in a desert war
prayers going to ash

we invent words
with great sobriety of grief

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Thursday 13 August 1663.

August 14, 2026August 13, 2026 by Luisa A. Igloria

What the Body Wore Before it Left this World

The last color I remember my father wearing
was yellow. He stood in the doorway the night
before he died, though we did not know it yet
at the time. He wore a terry-cloth bathrobe
wrapped around his frame, hiding how much
weight he’d lost the year before. Things seem 
momentous after they have occurred, rarely before.
Before is mostly anticipation. Sometimes, loss
feels like a long-running rehearsal. No one 
can quite get it right. It was a week we could not
have prepared for: the earth heaved from within
to make streetlights whip over sidewalks, 
silverware fly out of drawers. We gathered
in the empty lot with the neighbors, bracing 
for bricks to fly off chimneys, windows to crack
like sheets of brittle sugar. If I am still writing
about this, it must mean I am still calling on
his ghost. The last thing he ate was a plate 
of scrambled eggs. When we took him
to the hospital, the traffic lights kept
changing to yellow—the color of caution,
the color of waiting between stop and go.
I think about him at the store, my hands
hovering over bouquets with sunflowers.
I think about him when there is news 
of earthquakes somewhere in the world.
I can't separate these disasters from 
the wound I carry, like a lick of late 
sun trapped between glass.

August 13, 2026 by Dave Bonta

No wonder

A little to my office, to put down my yesterday’s journall, and so abroad to buy a bedstead and do other things.
So home again, and having put up the bedstead and done other things in order to my wife’s coming, I went out to several places and to Mrs. Turner’s, she inviting me last night, and there dined; with her and Madam Morrice and a stranger we were very merry and had a fine dinner, and thence I took leave and to White Hall, where my Lords Sandwich, Peterborough, and others made a Tangier Committee; spent the afternoon in reading and ordering with a great deal of alteration, and yet methinks never a whit the better, of a letter drawn by Creed to my Lord Rutherford. The Lords being against anything that looked to be rough, though it was in matter of money and accounts, wherein their courtship may cost the King dear. Only I do see by them, that speaking in matters distasteful to him that we write to, it is best to do it in the plainest way and without ambages or reasoning, but only say matters of fact, and leave the party to collect your meaning.
Thence by water to my brother’s, and there I hear my wife is come and gone home, and my father is come to town also, at which I wondered. But I discern it is to give my brother advice about his business, and it may be to pacify me about the differences that have been between my wife and him and my mother at her late being with them. Though by and by he coming to Mr. Holden’s (where I was buying a hat) he took no notice to me of anything. I talked to him a little while and left him to lie at the end of the town, and I home, where methought I found my wife strange, not knowing, I believe, in what temper she could expect me to be in, but I fell to kind words, and so we were very kind, only she could not forbear telling me how she had been used by them and her mayde, Ashwell, in the country, but I find it will be best not to examine it, for I doubt she’s in fault too, and therefore I seek to put it off from my hearing, and so to bed and there entertained her with great content, and so to sleep.

on the committee against
anything distasteful

we write in the plainest way
only matters of fact

leave the art
and wonder out

and I becoming old
left too

and seek to be entertained
and sleep

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Wednesday 12 August 1663.