The Generosity of Reviewing

Reviewing is hard work.  This summer, I have two reviews of poetry collections to write.  And while I've read both books several times already, I know I'm not yet prepared to sit down and do the hard work of forming my responses into well-ordered paragraphs.  For me, reviewing poetry is a matter of letting the book wiggle its way inside of me, so that eventually I feel as if I understand the construction not only of the individual poems but also of the collection as a whole.  We can call this way of understanding the text osmosis or a kind of trickling-down or meditation.

I also happen to be one of those reviewers who only writes about books I love or admire or from which I can learn.  Poetry has so few advocates, I see no reason to pile more words on the poetry-sucks bonfire.  If I can't advocate for a poetry collection, then I won't write about it.

Over the past week, I've been really grateful to read two brand-new reviews of Red Army Red.  Jeannine Hall Gailey said very generous things about the book in the latest issue of Mid American Review, a magazine that first published the poem which concludes Red Army Red.  And Michelle Chan Brown wrote a really thoughtful piece for Drunken Boat.  I'm very grateful for Michelle's perspective, because she's the only other diplobrat-poet that I've ever met; like me, Michelle lived in Poland during the bad old days of the Eastern Bloc and can therefore speak with real authority about the specificities of the era and the landscape.

Let me repeat myself:  reviewing is hard.  It's an act of generosity and perhaps also of good karma.  Reviewing--unless you're writing for a major newspaper or magazine--doesn't pay much.  So, when busy poets take time away from their own poems to write something about another poet's work, it really means something and we mustn't take such generous for granted.

Perfumes & Poems: Fuzzy Peach & Jennifer Tonge

My first years of college, after I became unable to wear my beloved Narcisse by Chloe, I was forced to find a new perfume.  For most of my undergraduate career, I spent holidays and breaks with my parents, who were still living in Brussels (what would end up being the longest of their overseas posts, during their time in the U.S. Foreign Service).  So, I became a frequent visitor--or passer-through--to Heathow and Frankfort, spending many hours in the strange, liminal spaces of airports.  And, it was during a layover in Heathrow that I bought my first bottle of Fuzzy Peach by The Body Shop.

They no longer make Fuzzy Peach.  I suspect that most of the delicious, scented objects that I should to buy at The Body Shop are long discontinued, artifacts from the early nineties, products that other Gen Xers probably remember with nostalgia, the way we remember the flannel button-downs we used to own and the movies we used to watch on VHS (Reality Bites, comes to mind).  

When I visit the website of The Body Shop, I discover that it's now possible to buy a Fuzzy Peach bath and shower gel.  The description makes me feel my age:  "A beauty classic returns."  What I loved when I was 18 is now a classic.  

I actually wore Fuzzy Peach in its oil form, rather than the eau de toilette pictured here.  The oil came in little, very round bottles of frosted glass.  In the store, a salesperson would transfer the liquid using a long eyedropper from a big bottle into the smaller that you would then take home with you.  The fragrance itself was absolutely true to its own name:  freshly picked, soft, perfect peaches.  There was nothing else.  And of course, both the perfume oil and the eau de toilette had terrible longevity on the skin, though I continue to think about those peaches often.

My love of peach perfumes no doubt began with Fuzzy Peach.  Once, in sophomore seminar, I sat next to a classmate from Albania.  Come here, he said in that improbable accent of his, hooking his foot around the leg of my chair, dragging it and me closer to his own chair, You smell like peaches.  Apparently, a girl who smelled of ripe could make a boy's mouth water.  There's a reason Prufrock asks, Do I dare to eat a peach? There's a reason that Chris Ware's Jimmy Corrigan:  The Smartest Kid on Earth contains, in frame after frame, so many drawings of uncut peaches.

Many boys told me I smelled like peaches in those days.  And I must have liked hearing the comparison because I wore Fuzzy Peach for years, only letting it go after college.  Now, if I spray on something that contains peach, the perfume better offer something darker or less innocent as well.  I'm not trying to tell anyone--least of all myself--that I'm still 18.  That girl wanted to be a peach but didn't know how to ask to be tasted.   

Reading Jennifer Tonge's terrific poem, "Peach," I see the same tensions between wanting to be desired but not know what do with desire itself: 

Peach
by Jennifer Tonge

        Come here’s

a peach he said

         and held it out just far

enough to reach beyond his lap

         and off-

         ered me

a room the one

         room left he said in all

of Thessaloniki that night

         packed with

         traders

The peach was lush

         I hadn’t slept for days

it was like velvet lips a lamp

         he smiled

         patted

the bed for me

         I knew it was in fact

the only room the only bed

         The peach

         trembled

and he said Come

         nodding to make me

agree I wanted the peach and

         the bed

         he said

to take it see

         how nice it was and I

thought how I could take it ginger-

         ly my

         finger-

tips only touch-

         ing only it Not in

or out I stayed in the doorway

         watching

         a fly

He stroked the peach

         and asked where I was from

I said the States he smiled and asked

         how long

         I’d stay

The fly had found

         the peach I said I’d leave

for Turkey in the morning I

         wanted

         so much

to sleep and on

         a bed I thought of all

the ways to say that word

         and that

         they must

have gradient

         meanings He asked me did

I want the peach and I said sure

         and took

         it from

his hand He asked

         then if I’d take the room

It costs too much I said and turned

         to go

         He said

to stay a while

         and we could talk The sun

was going down I said no thanks

         I’d head

         out on

the late train but

         could I still have the peach

and what else could he say to that

         but yes

Perfumes & Poems: Narcisse & Lisel Mueller

My first semester of college, I still wore Narcisse by Chloe, a perfume I had fallen in love with as I flipped through the pages of Seventeen Magazine sometime during my junior year of high school.  I adored the shape of the bottle, the clear glass bud topped with a frosted white flower, a little shot of green glass in its center.  I can't remember the scent of Narcisse any longer.  And when I research the perfume online, I am surprised to learn that it has top notes of peach, apricot, orange blossom, and violet, followed later on by spice, rose oil, and a vanilla base.

I can't remember the smell of Narcisse, but I always recognize the perfume when (still occasionally) I catch a breath of it on someone's skin.

Why?

At the end of the fall semester, I went home for winter break.  When I returned in late January, I discovered that my roommate, a girl prone to accidents and lapses of memory, thanks to her ample pot habit, had left an open carton of milk in my tiny square of a dorm refrigerator.  The whole room stunk of milk on the way to becoming cheese.  Even after I washed all my bedding, aired the place out, letting the cold Maryland wind through the room, I could still smell the gloppy milk in my fridge.  

This was in the days before Febreze.  And, not realizing how I was about to ruin the scent of Narcisse, I sprayed the perfume everywhere.  On my sheets.  On the one stuffed animal I had brought with me to college.  On my clothes and the little rag rug on my floor.  And, of course, in my fridge.

The rot of milk eventually disappeared.  Maybe it took a few days, maybe a few weeks.  I'm not sure.  But now, each time I spritzed Narcisse on my wrists and hair, I could only smell dairy turned bad.  No peach, apricot, orange blossom, and violet.  No spice or rose oil.  No vanilla base.  I had destroyed my favorite perfume, permanently linking its notes to the signature aroma of two-month-old, forgotten milk.

Still, when I look at that old Narcisse advertisement, the one with the tousled brunette, her lips opening almost to kiss the man who leans in from the top right corner of the page, I am charmed again.  That girl who loved a perfume for the shape of the bottle and who didn't realize that we can wreck even the things we love with our good intentions, our desire to clean up messes--she was quite innocent (certainly less knowing than the pouty model in the photograph).  She didn't know how careful we have to be with delicate things like the fragrance of flowers. 

So, in the spirit of Narcisse (pre-spoiled milk), here is another lovely poem by Lisel Mueller, one that speaks to how delicate all of us are when we are very young:

Paper-White Narcissus
By Lisel Mueller

Strange, how they got their name—
a boy, barely a man,
looked into sunlit water
and saw himself so beautiful
he spent his life pursuing
that treacherous reflection.
There is no greater loneliness.

Here they are, risen
from the darkness of the pebbled pool
we have made for them in a dish—
risen and broken through
the long, green capsules
to show us their faces:

they are so delicate they invite
protection or violation,
and they are blind.

Perfumes & Poems: Petite Cherie & Elizabeth Spires

Petite Cherie by Annick Goutal was one of the first niche perfumes that I sought out, after I began collecting fragrances.  At the time, I was convinced that I could only love gourmands and was in search of the perfect fruity-floral.  The perfume is notoriously delicate, often turning sour in the bottle or barely staying on the skin once it's sprayed.  Still, despite its bad reputation, Petite Cherie is known for being a very "good girl" of a fragrance.  There's no sugar or spice here, only everything nice.  The perfume was designed by Annick Goutal herself, in honor of her daughter, Camille.  

And what does this perfume made for a daughter smell like?  Fresh pears, peaches, maybe a little melon, the palest of pink roses, and vanilla.  Apparently, Petite Cherie was meant to honor Camille's transition from child into young woman.  But, to my nose, the perfume smells utterly of third grade.  The tender breasts and surprising body hair of adolescence haven't even been an imagined yet.  This is an orchard before the fruit have been bruised, the playroom before the children have learned to play doctor.   

When I spray on Petite Cherie, I think of "Pome" by Elizabeth Spires.  The perfume doesn't evoke the opening stanza of the poem, with its sly references to poem-making.  Instead, one has to wait for the final stanza, where the speaker suddenly puts aside wit and turns to the sincere business of memory.  Suddenly, she is all sweet seriousness, wistful because the fresh fruit cannot last forever:

Pome
By Elizabeth Spires

From flowering gnarled trees

they come, weighing down

the branches, dropping

with a soft sound onto

the loamy ground. Falling

and fallen. That’s a pome.

Common as an apple. Or

more rare. A quince or pear.

A knife paring away soft skin

exposes tart sweet flesh.

And deeper in, five seeds in a core

are there to make more pomes.

Look how it fits in my hand.

What to do? What to do?

I could give it to you.

Or leave it on the table

with a note both true and untrue:

Ceci n’est pas un poème.

I could paint it as a still life,

a small window of light

in the top right corner

(only a dab of the whitest white),

a place to peer in and watch it

change and darken as pomes will do.

O I remember days....

Climbing the branches of a tree

ripe and heavy with pomes.

Taking whatever I wanted.

There were always enough then.

Always enough.

Perfumes & Poems: Philosykos & Erica Jong

Philosykos by Dyptique is considered one of the most important of the fig perfumes.  Made by Olivia Giocobetti, who also designed the fig-centric Premier Figuier for L'Artisan, Philosykos is like breathing in a handful of very green figs.  There is fruit here, but there is also the white sap of the fig branch, the shiny leaf, the wood of the fig tree itself.  I keep looking for a ripe fig perfume but haven't found one yet.  I want to wear a fig that has turned purple, that bruises when touched.  

Philosykos contains no rot.  So, I wear it on days when I want something light and clean against me.  This is the kind of perfume I like to spritz on a scarf, so that many hours later, my nose will suddenly catch a little of that dry, earthy fruit.  Philosykos is unsentimental, balanced, ascetic in the way of certain Greek Philosophers.  Many people love it for its simplicity.

It isn't the sort of fig that I want.

I like Erica Jong's "Figs," which Garrison Keillor reads beautifully on his poetry program, The Writer's Almanac.  Jong teaches me why I want a perfume that possesses a "fig's fertile heart." But, if Jong is right to say that this fig was the true fruit of knowledge of good and evil, then maybe there's a reason I'm meant to wear Philosykos instead.  Maybe I need the restrained green of Dyptique's scent and not the ripened, purple fruit which taught us to see our own sad and terrible nakedness.


Figs
By Erica Jong

Italians know
how to call a fig
a fig: fica.
Mandolin-shaped fruit,
feminine as seeds,
amber or green
and bearing large leaves
to clothe our nakedness.

I believe it was
not an apple but a fig
Lucifer gave Eve,
knowing she would find
a fellow feeling
in this female fruit

and knowing also
that Adam would
lose himself
in the fig's fertile heart
whatever the price—

God's wrath, expulsion
angry angels
pointing with swords
to a world of woe.

One bite into
a ripe fig
is worth worlds
and worlds and worlds
beyond the green
of Eden.

Perfumes & Poems: Narcotic Venus & Elise Paschen

I own a little sample of Narcotic Venus by Nasommato, which I ordered from Luckyscent several months ago.  Nasomatto calls Amsterdam its home.  With names like China White and Absinth, the perfumes seem to be inspired by the legal (and not so legal) intoxicants for which the city is known.  Black Afgano, one of their very masculine fragrances—a liquid that's ink-dark in the bottle—smells like smoke and incense and hash. 

Maybe I haven’t made space in my perfume collection for a full bottle of Narcotic Venus because it’s another scent whose focus is jasmine.  I do love jasmine.  I love to drink tea impregnated with its delicate smell.  I love to walk through big, flowery spritzes of it, after I’ve stepped out of the shower in the morning.  But, how many jasmines can I justify owning, even if this one is made delicious with tuberose and some mysterious blend of spices that I can't quite name?  Even if this one is addictive?

I've written before about my love of ripe, rotten jasmine.  As we move toward June and the Eastern Shore turns steamy, I can imagine myself wearing Narcotic Venus, the heat warming the white petals on my skin.  There's no question that much of the point of perfume is sex.  Of course, we are always giving off the trace aromas of hormones and perspiration and whatever other magic of chemistry makes us smell like ourselves.  And perfume seems a way to add to the magic.  When I smell Narcotic Venus, I'm reminded of this poem by Elise Paschen, which is about bodies, desire, and the magic of certain evenings:

Acrobat
By Elise Paschen

The night you were conceived 
we balanced underneath a tent, 

amazed at the air-marveler, 
who, hand-over-hand, seized the stars, 

then braved the line to carry home 
a big-top souvenir umbrella. 

Earth-bound a year, you dare 
gravity, sliding from the couch 

to table. Mornings, on tiptoe, 
stretching fingers, you grab 

Saturn, Venus and the moons 
raining down from the sky of ceiling. 

Perfumes & Poems: Aspen & Lisel Mueller

My husband and I were college sweethearts.  We met senior year at St. John's in Annapolis.  The Great Books school.  We were in two classes together, laboratory and language; and I suspect that it was my titillating observations about Baudelaire--all those ripe bodies, all those lush metaphors for sex--which made him fall in love with me.

Those first years, we had so very little money.  Straight out of college, we moved in together, sharing a tiny, costly apartment on Cathedral Street in downtown Annapolis.  What the place lacked in charm and square footage (not to mention off-street parking, central air, and sound-proofing) it made up for in location.  We were in the historic district, tucked among the million-dollar colonials and the brick-lined streets.

When we first met, my husband wore only one fragrance:  Aspen by Coty.  I loved lying next to him, resting my cheek on his chest, my nose almost touching his white, cotton undershirt.  He smelled of citrus and what I later learned was vetiver and a manly sort of lavender.  Aspen is one of the ultimate drugstore colognes:  comforting, cheap, long-lasting.  Our first holiday together, I bought him one of those perfume gift sets that you can find during the winter season at any CVS or Walgreens in America.  It probably cost $30 and contained a vat of Aspen plus perhaps some soap and aftershave.

That was more than 15 years ago.  Now, my husband has a shelf full of fragrances.  He uses scents from By Killian, Creed, Montale, and Bond No 9.  His favorites are from Tom Ford.  In other words, the guy has expensive tastes.  Yet, somehow, almost all of his fragrances contain the DNA of Aspen.  They are fougeres, perfumes that evoke dark forests thick with notes of coumarin and oakmoss.  

When I think of Aspen and how it made me feel--protected, wrapped in a green stillness--I reminded of this wonderful poem by Lisel Mueller.  In the best moments, love can make us feel safe, even if the outside world is nearing winter and the wind brings with it sharp threads of ice:

In November 
by Lisel Mueller

Outside the house the wind is howling

and the trees are creaking horribly.

This is an old story

with its old beginning,

as I lay me down to sleep.

But when I wake up, sunlight

has taken over the room.

You have already made the coffee

and the radio brings us music

from a confident age. In the paper

bad news is set in distant places.

Whatever was bound to happen

in my story did not happen.

But I know there are rules that cannot be broken.

Perhaps a name was changed.

A small mistake. Perhaps

a woman I do not know

is facing the day with the heavy heart

that, by all rights, should have been mine.