Atomizer: Poems
In Atomizer, Elizabeth A. I. Powell examines pressing questions of today, from equality and political unrest to the diminishing of democratic ideals, asking if it is even appropriate to write about love in a time seemingly hurtling toward authoritarianism. With honesty and humor, her poems explore fragrance and perfumery as a means of biological and religious seduction. Evoking Whitman's sentiment that we are all made of the same atoms, Atomizer looks toward an underestimated sense--scent--as a way to decipher the liminal spaces around us. Molecules of perfume create an invisible reality where narratives can unfold and interact, pathways through which Powell addresses issues of materialism, body image, and the physical and psychological contours of emotional relationships.
A work of fearless social satire and humorous yet painful truth, Atomizer offers a cultural, political, and sociological account of love in the present moment.Earn by promoting books
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Elizabeth A. I. Powell is one of those rare poets of tremendous spiritual obsessions who are at the same time in complete command of the organic world--its tactility, physicality, violence, and strange, unsettling details. She is visionary yet concrete. She is always startling and dramatic. Her poems are big and engulfing, yet shot through with a beautiful locality and precision. She sees the sermons in the stones.--Vijay Seshadri, author of 3 Sections, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry
Atomizer presents a world reflected through our most elusive sense: olfaction. Generously evocative, reflective, and above all human, the poems in this book present themselves as little aromatic jewels. They capture what it means to be a sensory body with a brain attached. They get to the feeling of a sense that is impossible to know.--Saskia Wilson-Brown, founder and executive director of the Institute for Art and Olfaction
