The Five Senses: SMELL

“Smell is a potent wizard that transports us across thousands of miles and all the years we have lived.  The odors for fruits waft me to my southern home, to my childhood frolics in the peach orchard. Other odors, instantaneous and fleeting, cause my heart to dilate joyously or contract with remembered grief. Even as I think of smells, my nose is full of scents that start awake sweet memories of summers gone and ripening fields far away. Helen Keller

MUSIC

Lynyrd Skynyrd – “That Smell”
Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan      from “Back to Qawwali”(Long Distance Records, Wagram Label, Montreuil, France)
Karrin Allyson, “You Don’t Know What Love Is”  Karrin Allyson Ballads, Remembering John Coltrane Kampo Audio Studios, New York, NY
Eavan Orman Combo “Tango”
John Prine & Alice Dement “In Spite of Ourselves”  from the album “In Spite of Ourselves” Principally recorded at Jack’s Tracks and MCA Publishing Studio, Nashville, Tennessee
Misia, from “Garras Dos Sentidos”  Erato Discs, Paris France
Manu Chao, “King of the Bongo” from Mano Negra    Conny’s Studio (1990-1991)
Bach, from Sonatas & Partitas; Itzhak Perlman  EMI Classics

LITERATURE

Hafiz,  “If the Scent of Her Hair” Translated by Daniel Ladinsky
Shakespeare, “Romeo and Juliet” Act II scene ii
Rikki Ducournet “Gazelle” Knopf, 2003; Vintage, 2004; Gallimard, French translation, 2007; Fanucci, Italian translation, 2003.
Christine Hemp “The Garden at Escazu”
Hafiz “Stop Being So Religious”
William Matchett “The Water Ouzel”
Diane Ackerman, “A Natural History of the Senses”

About Christine Hemp

Poet and writer Christine Hemp has aired her poems and essays on NPR’s Morning Edition; she has sent a poem of hers into space on a NASA mission to monitor the birth of stars; and her essays have appeared in such publications as the Iowa Review, Yale Anglers Journal, and the Boston Globe. Her awards include Harvard Extension School’s Conway Award for Teaching Writing, a Washington State Artist Trust Fellowship for Literature, and an Iowa Review Award. Her poetry collection, That Fall, was published by Finishing Line Press in 2011. Hemp teaches at the University of Iowa Summer Writing Festival.
Poems and Ponderings

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