There’s a whole world of perfume in poetry and literature, not so surprising as it’s always been a medium of feeling and expression.
To describe one’s mood, experience or anything at all, scent is a powerful common tongue. By writing of fragrances whether it’s perfume or the smell of our surroundings, or in fact reading such things take us immediately to the core of the feeling or place. I have a few books that are edits of poetry with references to perfume, but there’s a vast collection of literature almost impossible to gather into one book or blog post.
One of the first ones I remember reading in my mid-teens was The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde. I don’t want to bore you with giving you exact specifics of how many pages he goes on to describe perfumes but it’s a considerable amount around Chapter 11. The chiselled, romantic language enhanches each word describing perfume materials, sparkling bottles and far away lands that these scents travelled from. You immediately get a sense of longing and Victorian decadence.
Another one that stands out for me is Baudelaire’s work, he often uses scents and perfumes as a symbol of “exotica” and hedonism.
You may think these were “obvious” examples but they are the two I encountered at a very young age and stuck the most, inspiring me to challange myself more and be able to describe scents in either a stylised or simplified way.
I’ll be bold and share one of my poems here very humbly, purely as an example of something that has never seen daylight (or blue light) before.
Riverbank
You are unkown
Something to untangle
But I know your touch
Your scents that linger
Over me a heavy star
Stepping on the stream
Its reflection: black
It tastes like sweet sap
My limbs tingle
Like pins in blood
Hands alabaster
Shivers white musks
And a pair of eyes
In the bluish hour
Look at me in a way
They always should
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