Elliott A. Hooten: Five Volumes of Smell and Sentiment
Born and adopted from Haiti, Elliott A. Hooten brings the sensibility of a designer fragrance perfumist to the intimate alchemy of poetry. This five-volume collection is a curated—and unapologetically raw—exploration of the human heart: loss, heartache, happiness, lust, hatred, and every shade between. Each volume is a chamber of scent rendered in language, where notes of memory open like citrus then darken to oud, where longing lingers like a base accord you cannot shake.
Volume I — Salt & Ash Salt for the mouths that cried; ash for what remains. These poems map grief as if it were a coastline—eroding, reshaping, stubbornly present. Sparse lines, sudden images, a mineral clarity that smells of sea and burned paper.
Volume II — Honey & Bruise Softness and impact collide. Here love is honeyed, sticky, at times suffocating; at others, a bruise that blooms slow and exquisite. The voice moves between tenderness and accusation, each stanza a tactile, edible thing.
Volume III — Bright Smoke Joy and mischief in volatile forms. Citrus laughter, tobacco afternoons, the heat of streets after rain. These poems celebrate the surprising, reckless pleasure of being alive—bright, smoky, impossible to pin down.
Volume IV — Lace & Iron Danger wrapped in refinement. Lust and hatred braided together into something elegant and feral. Formal diction meets raw confession; the poems feel like silk gloves stained with rust.
Volume V — The Residue What remains after all perfumes fade. Memory, regret, small consolations. These closing pieces gather the collection’s scents and let them settle—soft, stubborn, unforgettable.
Why read this collection?
A perfumist’s sensibility: language that thinks in accords and aftertastes, making emotion tangible.
A voice shaped by origin and adoption: personal history infuses each page with specificity and resonance.
A full emotional arc: not a single mood, but the messy continuum of human feeling.
Take this wild journey with us: inhale the verses, let their scents surprise and unsettle you, and emerge with a new sense of the ways loss and pleasure, cruelty and tenderness, can coexist in the same breath.
Elliott A. Hooten: Five Volumes of Smell and Sentiment
Born and adopted from Haiti, Elliott A. Hooten brings the sensibility of a designer fragrance perfumist to the intimate alchemy of poetry. This five-volume collection is a curated—and unapologetically raw—exploration of the human heart: loss, heartache, happiness, lust, hatred, and every shade between. Each volume is a chamber of scent rendered in language, where notes of memory open like citrus then darken to oud, where longing lingers like a base accord you cannot shake.
Volume I — Salt & Ash Salt for the mouths that cried; ash for what remains. These poems map grief as if it were a coastline—eroding, reshaping, stubbornly present. Sparse lines, sudden images, a mineral clarity that smells of sea and burned paper.
Volume II — Honey & Bruise Softness and impact collide. Here love is honeyed, sticky, at times suffocating; at others, a bruise that blooms slow and exquisite. The voice moves between tenderness and accusation, each stanza a tactile, edible thing.
Volume III — Bright Smoke Joy and mischief in volatile forms. Citrus laughter, tobacco afternoons, the heat of streets after rain. These poems celebrate the surprising, reckless pleasure of being alive—bright, smoky, impossible to pin down.
Volume IV — Lace & Iron Danger wrapped in refinement. Lust and hatred braided together into something elegant and feral. Formal diction meets raw confession; the poems feel like silk gloves stained with rust.
Volume V — The Residue What remains after all perfumes fade. Memory, regret, small consolations. These closing pieces gather the collection’s scents and let them settle—soft, stubborn, unforgettable.
Why read this collection?
A perfumist’s sensibility: language that thinks in accords and aftertastes, making emotion tangible.
A voice shaped by origin and adoption: personal history infuses each page with specificity and resonance.
A full emotional arc: not a single mood, but the messy continuum of human feeling.
Take this wild journey with us: inhale the verses, let their scents surprise and unsettle you, and emerge with a new sense of the ways loss and pleasure, cruelty and tenderness, can coexist in the same breath.
