Tag: Book review

A serene and somewhat eerie landscape of a graveyard with rolling hills. The scene is depicted in shades of black, gray, and blue, giving it a watercolor effect. Numerous tombstones with crosses are scattered across the hills, some in the foreground and others fading into the distance. Bare trees with thin branches stand among the graves, adding to the somber atmosphere. In the sky, a few birds are flying, enhancing the tranquil yet haunting feel of the scene. Tall grasses and plants are visible in the foreground, swaying gently as if moved by the wind. Created with ChatGPT for this review of Sapphires on the Graves.

‘Sapphires on the Graves’ by Scott Ferry * Review by Peter Mladinic

aromatica poetica April 9, 2025

God and I, earth and sky, and family are all-significant in Scott Ferry’s book of poems, Sapphires on the Graves (Glass Lyre Press, 2024). A book of prose poems stylistically void of capital letters, the lower case g for God, complemented by the lower case i, suggests poetry is more about questions than answers. Ferry’s lower case g suggests the secular, an entity in the universe, a creator of all or nothing. His lower case i connotes we; he writes from …

Nose Dive book cover and mirror image set on a stylized pink and white orchid wallpaper.

Nose Dive by Catherine Haley Epstein * Book Review

aromatica poetica December 23, 2019

Nose Dive: A book for the curious seeking creative potential through their noses (2019) by Catherine Haley Epstein is an adventure for your nose in art, anthropology, and science. You will be amazed at how much you didn’t know about this oft-neglected sense. Epstein is an artist, award-winning writer, designer and curator. She wrote a great review of Milan’s Esxence for us earlier this year, and I was delighted to receive her book available for purchase HERE! As Epstein explains …

The Liars’ Asylum by Jacob M. Appel book cover tiled thrice.

‘The Liars’ Asylum: Stories’ by Jacob M. Appel – Review

aromatica poetica May 22, 2019

Some of the flora and fauna in Jacob M. Appel’s The Liars’ Asylum are real and others are made of painted silk and wire, but they are all as vibrant and memorable as the cast of characters whose lives they ornament. In this story collection published by Black Lawrence Press, Appel explores themes of love, disillusionment, and just getting along in the human condition, which is always difficult whether you are an orphan teen or a middle-age transporter of incapacitated …

From Art to Bats: Review of Perfumes The Guide 2018 by Luca Turin & Tania Sanchez

aromatica poetica July 18, 2018

Perfumes: The Guide 2018 presents more than 1,200 perfume reviews by Tania Sanchez, a writer with interests in perfume, aesthetics and culture, and Luca Turin, a biophysicist, perfume critic and olfaction-science rabble-rouser of The Emperor of Scent fame, and accomplishes its mission to assert perfumery as an art form, worthy of criticism. I discovered their first guide Perfumes A-Z while researching Aroma Victoriana, where I quoted their admonishment of the perfume industry and its medieval secrecy–a secrecy that has helped …