Word: attar
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...thirty a.m.--an ungodly hour in anyone's estimation, but especially so on a Saturday morning. Not even Elsie's is open. Birds chirp raucously and the light attar of apple blossoms tinctures the air. A crowd of about 50--rubbing sleep from their eyes--has repaired to the banks of the Charles, attired in everything from jeans to tails and derby...
...into Revlon's Raspberry and only 23 into Maybelline's Toasted Brick. Perfumes are costly in part because of small quantities of exceptionally expensive natural oils. Among some of the exceptionally prized, the prices per lb. run: jasmine $4,091, oeillette $4,727, orrisroot $4,773, attar of rose $1,136 and ambrette seed...
Pressing 65 years' worth of such contributions between the covers of a single anthology ought to produce something like essence of attar. It does not, as former Poetry Editor Daryl Hine admits in his introduction: "Much of what has appeared in Poetry, early and late, is mediocre, and seems more so today." Aside from "Prufrock," the magazine published only one other great poem: Wallace Stevens' "Sunday Morning," which survived even Harriet Monroe's rather highhanded editing and rearranging of its stanzas. But the value of The "Poetry" Anthology does not rest on its Parnassian heights. Flipping through...