What if 100 contemporary American poets were sent individually selected vials of perfume, fragrances chosen to reflect the authors’ voices, aesthetics, or writerly obsessions? What if each poet wrote something new in response? THE BOOK OF SCENTED THINGS collects the results of this strange, aromatic experiment: poems of longing and of childhood memory, poems of place and philosophy and politics, poems about the challenge of writing poems about perfume. This is an anthology whose words will linger on your pulse points long after even the base notes have faded.