Purveyors of fine poetry since 2003.
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: sea glass, lilacs, lapwings, catkins, and much more. Enjoy.
Continue reading “Poetry Blog Digest 2025, Week 16”
This morning I attempted to persuade my wife in bed to go to Brampton this week, but she would not, which troubles me, and seeing that I could keep it no longer from her, I told her that I was resolved to go to Portsmouth to-morrow. Sir W. Batten goes to Chatham to-day, and will be back again to come for Portsmouth after us on Thursday next.
I went to Westminster and several places about business. Then at noon dined with my Lord Crew; and after dinner went up to Sir Thos. Crew’s chamber, who is still ill. He tells me how my Lady Duchess of Richmond and Castlemaine had a falling out the other day; and she calls the latter Jane Shore, and did hope to see her come to the same end that she did.
Coming down again to my Lord, he told me that news was come that the Queen is landed; at which I took leave, and by coach hurried to White Hall, the bells ringing in several places; but I found there no such matter, nor anything like it. So I went by appointment to Anthony Joyce’s, where I sat with his wife and Mall Joyce an hour or two, and so her husband not being at home, away I went and in Cheapside spied him and took him into the coach. Home, and there I found my Lady Jemimah, and Anne, and Madamoiselle come to see my wife, whom I left, and to talk with Joyce about a project I have of his and my joyning, to get some money for my brother Tom and his kinswoman to help forward with her portion if they should marry. I mean in buying of tallow of him at a low rate for the King, and Tom should have the profit; but he tells me the profit will be considerable, at which I was troubled, but I have agreed with him to serve some in my absence.
He went away, and then came Mr. Moore and sat late with me talking about business, and so went away and I to bed.
I could become still
on the other shore
end the bells ringing
like cheap joy
get someone to be troubled
in my absence
Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Monday 21 April 1662.
which naked branches make
a paper wasp’s antennae twitch
out scouting for a nesting place
hind legs outfitted in safety orange
at the top of an oak curled
like a scroll around its missing heart
two flickers perched a foot apart
engage in a bowing contest
a green sweat bee wallows
through the wind-blown hair on my arm
fresh from a blossoming shadbush
that bridal delicacy
a gnatcatcher’s two-note song
sounds both necessary and sufficient
i step aside for a dust-devil
made of dead leaves
it careens off for another hundred feet
and rises into the canopy
as if the devil intends to re-leaf
not with new growth but old
a project as certain to fail
as May Day will come
(Lord’s day). My intention being to go this morning to White Hall to hear South, my Lord Chancellor’s chaplain, the famous preacher and oratour of Oxford, (who the last Lord’s day did sink down in the pulpit before the King, and could not proceed,) it did rain, and the wind against me, that I could by no means get a boat or coach to carry me; and so I staid at Paul’s, where the judges did all meet, and heard a sermon, it being the first Sunday of the term; but they had a very poor sermon. So to my Lady’s and dined, and so to White Hall to Sir G. Carteret, and so to the Chappell, where I challenged my pew as Clerk of the Privy Seal and had it, and then walked home with Mr. Blagrave to his old house in the Fishyard, and there he had a pretty kinswoman that sings, and we did sing some holy things, and afterwards others came in and so I left them, and by water through the bridge (which did trouble me) home, and so to bed.
a pulpit for the wind
that nowhere sermon
the sun white
as a grave to the fish
we sing holy things
after the water
Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Sunday 20 April 1662.
Have you forgotten what it's like
to be a body unhomed, untethered,
unguarded?
Sometimes, I admit,
I have been shameless. Haven't you
ever begged favors on behalf of those
you love?
Nothing preposterous—
only things like friendship
and time; words for a wound,
space for a grieving.
A snail
finds its way to the windowsill;
its slow track, also a seam.
You are not weak
to leave
traces of where you struggled
against the ground of being.
This morning, before we sat, I went to Aldgate; and at the corner shop, a draper’s, I stood, and did see Barkestead, Okey, and Corbet, drawn towards the gallows at Tiburne; and there they were hanged and quartered. They all looked very cheerful; but I hear they all die defending what they did to the King to be just; which is very strange. So to the office and then home to dinner, and Captain David Lambert came to take his leave of me, he being to go back to Tangier there to lie.
Then abroad about business, and in the evening did get a bever, an old one, but a very good one, of Sir W. Batten, for which I must give him something; but I am very well pleased with it. So after writing by the post to bed.
morning gate
I see a gallows
red road in the evening
I go on writing
Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Saturday 19 April 1662.
In rows, on gurneys separated by curtains.
Low chirps, erratic lines, collective
beeping. Are you here for the apple
grown large in your throat, the flushed
ladders climbing up your thighs; the furry
moth trapped in the elevator of your windpipe,
the tattoo artist hiding in your blood? A nurse
attaches a device to the tip of your finger.
Another threads a clear liquid into your
vein. What day is it? You count with her
in reverse from ten, and wind up in some
backforest where you'll sink without
resistance into the moss. How much
time were you there? You were opened
like a book, cut into a cross-section,
made porous as a sheet of cheese. Now
your hip bone sings like a flute.
The sun is starting
to build summer rooms
Bare heads take on the sheen
of copper
the depth of graphite
About the war memorial the artist said
she wanted to cut open the earth
polishing its open sides
like a geode She wanted a way to begin
walking
toward the encounter with
loss
Last night as I hunched my shoulders I felt
a slight deepening behind the ridge
of my collarbone
My thumb fit into it
lying down
Already the body looks
toward the scenes of oncoming ruin
even as lips graze
its wrists its shoulders
Let today at least be a litany
for softness
that language cannot exhaust
This morning sending the boy down into the cellar for some beer I followed him with a cane, and did there beat him for his staying of arrands and other faults, and his sister came to me down and begged for him. So I forebore, and afterwards, in my wife’s chamber, did there talk to Jane how much I did love the boy for her sake, and how much it do concern to correct the boy for his faults, or else he would be undone. So at last she was well pleased.
This morning Sir G. Carteret, Sir W. Batten and I met at the office, and did conclude of our going to Portsmouth next week, in which my mind is at a great loss what to do with my wife, for I cannot persuade her to go to Brampton, and I am loth to leave her at home. All the afternoon in several places to put things in order for my going.
At night home and to bed.
down into the cellar
with a cane
my love for her
at last at a loss
what to do
with her things
Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Friday 18 April 1662.
Accident is merely another way of saying
the path was unclear; or it was dark, the moon
was covering its face. A spill of water
on the table tracks a path along grooves
that once lived in the wood— Whatever the impulse,
what leaves arrives at some form of destination.
In our house, we have no hurricane
shelter. In the bathroom, brown tiles
lie next to each other and water
coming through the taps can be
as hot as you want. I am trying to learn
tenderness without fear of being wounded,
without fearing the constant dialogue
of self versus its loneliness.