Tag: God

A triptych of cyanotypes from Anna Atkins’s Photographs of British Algae presents three seaweed specimens—large marine algae—rendered as white silhouettes against deep blue. From left to right: Cystoseira ericoides, Sargassum bacciferum, and Cystoseira granulata. Their forms grow increasingly dense and intricate, while faint handwritten labels quietly anchor the images in scientific taxonomy.

Blue Blades, Blue Times * Poems by Gabriella Garofalo * Cyanotypes by Anna Atkins

aromatica poetica April 28, 2026

To P. Are words partners in crime with life? A heated argument going on, While the rough wild sea can’t wait For souls to dive in and on no accounts Can flowers rise- No funny ghosts, but real wrath and hunger If over here, away to the left, In the lane alongside your fields, Maudlin ballads or garish sunsets keep shouting At full blast that life is wonderful, the trick of blue gamblers- But hush now, look, hope and desire …

On a chipped porcelain tray edged in worn gold and dotted with tiny painted flowers, a glossy black volcano rises where a perfume bottle might stand. Molten lava glows in oversaturated reds and oranges, spilling thickly over its sides and pooling across the tray. Around it, elegant glass perfume bottles—amber, blue, and crystal—remain poised and intact, their refinement contrasting with the central eruption. Created and described by ChatGPT for “The Woman in the Perfume Department Asks What I’m Looking For.”

“The Woman in the Perfume Department Asks What I’m Looking For” * Poetry * Annie Przypyszny

aromatica poetica March 3, 2026

Something brash with a touch of bashful. An active volcano hushed by alpine snows, or some other less aggressive sister of cinnamon. But that’s for special occasions: my twenty-ninth birthday, my second twenty-ninth birthday. For everyday, I want to smell like a sixteen-year-old girl at the beach. You get what I mean— Like a saltwaterlogged corsage; like honeysuckle forced to walk the plank; like gardenias flung amok in a mid- summer sunshower. I remember hearing from some old man that …

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 …

A digital illustration of a white woman in a black sleeveless dress stands against a black backdrop. She holds a smoking object in her left hand, and, in her right, she holds a cord connected to a hanging cauldron. Subtle, amber light emanates from the right hand. From Ro Miller, credit: Imagine.Art.

“Scent of Faith” * Nonfiction * Ro Miller

aromatica poetica February 15, 2024

I was indoctrinated as a Catholic, so you will forgive the following several hundred words. I recently attended the Riverside Church Candlelight Carol Festival, an event aptly structured around a selection of Christian Carols. Upon sitting in the closely packed pews, wearing what now amounts to my Sunday best, I was thrust back into the bittersweet memories of Sunday mass. The proximity of strangers, the lukewarm dread at the approaching sermon, and the stoic resignation that worship was my reality …

“Le Paradis Perdu” (Paradise Lost), by Paul Gauguin, 1890. Colorful painting of the tree and snake and eve in an impressionist symbolist style.

“Of Man’s First Disobedience” * Taste & Smell in John Milton’s Paradise Lost

aromatica poetica February 26, 2020

The opening lines of Paradise Lost (1667) by John Milton are perhaps some of the most recognizable in all of western literature, and they begin with taste—the oh-so-delicious taste of good and evil that will get humans kicked out of Eden forever: Of Man’s first disobedience, and the fruitOf that forbidden tree whose mortal tasteBrought death into the World, and all our woe,With loss of Eden, till one greater ManRestore us, and regain the blissful seat,Sing, Heavenly Muse,… A quick …