Aromatica Poetica is delighted to present the fourth in the Sillage series by Jehanne Dubrow. She is the author of several books of poetry and prose that dance with our heart’s senses, including Taste: A Book of Small Bites, which we highly recommend! Each of the 12 poems are written in the voice of a specific perfume—this one is Fille en Aiguilles[i]—and were begun during the height of the pandemic. For this Sillage series, the poems are paired with a …
Tag: Incense
“Scent of Faith” * Nonfiction * Ro Miller
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 …
“Recess” and “Dispensation” * Poetry * John Muro
Recess Morning at last giving way to mid- day hours when we descended onto the schoolyard like a squabble of greedy gulls in worn white shirts, clip-on ties and plaid suspenders. Solemn decorum of early morning mass, with its luminous vernal pools of stained glass, pasty amulets and cleaving scents, now set by, we worshipped, above all else, speed and the ability to elude capture, covering the tideless expanse of asphalt as if they were on a slip- stream to …
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“Final Flourish” and Other Poems by John Muro
Final Flourish May’s final flourish and the lilacs have given up their priestly purple for a crestfallen brown, colors lifted and carried by minstrel winds to beds of irises, allium and meadow sage. With summer’s cruel advance, I imagine the hoarding of their fatigued fragrance in the tangled thrust of roots, abiding a cooler darkness until the earth first warms, breaks apart the frost, and calls upon the miracle of creation so they can once again extend their lazy heave …
“Geology and Genealogy” * A Poem by Kyle Erickson
He spent years under Oklahoma stones. Even after washed and dried, his shirt held their incense. When building chimneys, the odor of wet mortar settled into his beard. Portland dust fertilized his boots with city-germinating aroma— skyscrapers and sidewalks come from this dust and will return to it. After a rain, the New York City pavement composed him, yesterday, in his son’s memory. Stone or concrete perfumes him into existence, out of thin air, for his descendants. Anywhere. —About the …
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5 Aromatic Poems by William Doreski
The Sweet Purple Scent of Wild Grapes Swimming in the Scantic River in the hot swarms of gnats and sweet purple scent of wild grapes: boys and girls splashing naked together, school looming a few weeks ahead. As the afternoon wanes we leap dripping and pink from the lukewarm fish-smelling current and dress and run off in creepy little gangs, boys sneering and girls aloof as if we didn’t know each other, going home to hot dogs and beans. …
The Tastes & Smells of Magick Spells: An Interview with Skye Alexander
Skye Alexander is an artist, astrologer, tarot reader, feng shui practitioner, drummer, and the author of many fiction and nonfiction books, including The Modern Witchcraft Spell Book and, most recently, Find Your Goddess. I reached out to Skye for an article about Sex Magick for Playboy, and decided to press my luck and ask her to do one more interview with me for Aromatica Poetica, to which she generously agreed. In her useful and informative spell books, she often provides …
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Myrrh: Myth, Resin, Love, and the Everlasting
In Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Orpheus sings of the unfortunate Myrrha, who, overcome by a perverse love for her father, tricked him into having sex with her with the help of her loyal nurse. When her father took a lamp to the face of his nubile mystery lover and found his very own daughter, he snatched his sword and made to kill her. She ran away and wandered from Arabia to Sabaea. After nine months, her burden weighing heavy, she collapsed and …
The Art of Perfumery, Introduction & History I, by G.W. Septimus Piesse, 1857
*This introduction to The Art of Perfumery (1857) comes from the Project Gutenberg edition. We’ve referred to our author, G.W. Septimus Piesse before, quoting with great admiration his forward-looking thoughts on the problematic secrecy of perfumery–a quote that you will read in context here. This introduction to a comprehensive manual and recipe book for Victorian perfumers inspires a love of scent that is at the heart of Aromatica Poetica.* THE ART OF PERFUMERY, AND METHOD OF OBTAINING THE ODORS OF …
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