Scents

“We tend to treat odor in general as a sort of taboo,” writes Scott Sayare in a New York Times Magazine article about a woman who discovered she could smell Parkinson’s disease, in some cases over a dozen years before medical diagnosis. “Modern doctors are trained to diagnose by inspection, palpation, percussion and auscultation; ‘inhalation’ is not on the list, and social norms would discourage it if it were.” This week, focus your attention on your sense of smell as you go about your days, perhaps even ignoring social norms as you inhale all the odors around you. Then, write a poem that focuses solely, or primarily, on smell—perhaps juxtaposing scents that are in your everyday life now and those from a more distant past.