Nick thinks of beer. No, he dreams of beer. Hungover, ghost of six beers past churning in his corpulent stomach, that word sings, beer. Beer. En route to classes, a graduate student he thinks about beer. He conjures the amber ale of 90 Shillings, the bitter sour of a La Folies from New Belgium. He tries not to conjure beer, but after another lecture from his father, full of dissection, bad son, weak, too artistic, the beer calls. Drink me, …
Tag: Obsession
Hawthorne’s “Rappaccini’s Daughter,” A Tale of A Boy, A Girl, Her Flower & It’s Poison
Aromatica Poetica is delighted to present “Rappaccini’s Daughter” by Nathaniel Hawthorne, first published in 1844, and later collected in Mosses From An Old Manse. We were alerted to this stunning gothic tale by Jim Endersby in his fun cultural history of the Orchid, in which he analyzes it as “one of the earliest killer plant stories.” As you know from reading “The Flowering of the Strange Orchid,” we love killer plant stories! But whereas H.G. Well’s story is lighthearted, Hawthorne’s …
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‘The Flowering of the Strange Orchid’ by H. G. Wells
*We were alerted to this story by Olfiction’s Reading and Smelling List, and found it in The Country of the Blind and Other Stories. Collecting orchids is not for the faint-hearted! We at Aromatica Poetica appreciate such strange obsessions, and hope you do too!* The Flowering of the Strange Orchid The buying of orchids always has in it a certain speculative flavour. You have before you the brown shriveled lump of tissue, and for the rest you must trust …
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