Flight Lines
Some of our favorite poems about aviation.
- By airspacemag.com
- AirSpaceMag.com, May 01, 2009
"Wegbereiter Ikarus," print, woodblock on paper, by Wilhelm Geissler, 1966.
Courtesy NASM
To mark National Poetry Month in April 2009, we offered a daily selection of aviation-related verse. The featured poems were taken from the following books:
April 1, 2009
"An Emblem of Byzantium" is from Sources by Devin Johnston.
April 2, 2009
"An Airstrip in Essex 1960" is from Old and New Poems by Donald Hall.
April 3, 2009
"The Race" is from Strike Sparks: Selected Poems, 1980-2002 by Sharon Olds.
April 6, 2009
"Sonic Boom" is from Telephone Poles and Other Poems by John Updike.
April 7, 2009
"Our Ground Time Here Will Be Brief" is from Selected Poems: 1960-1990 by Maxine Kumin.
April 8, 2009
"A History of Air Travel" by Anna Leahy was included in the anthology On the Wing: American Poems of Air and Space, edited by Karen Yelena Olsen. It originally appeared in the Fall 1995/Winter 1996 issue of Seattle Review.
April 9, 2009
"Skywriting" is from Skywriting and Other Poems, by Charles Tomlinson.
April 10, 2009
"Osage County Museum, Pawhuska, Oklahoma," is from One Age in a Dream by Diane Glancy.
April 13, 2009
"Persistence of 1937" is from Old and New Poems by Donald Hall.
April 14, 2009
"TWA 800" is from Open Shutters by Mary Jo Salter.
April 15, 2009
"Space Shuttle" is from Jaguar of Sweet Laughter: New and Selected Poems.
April 16, 2009
"Sparrow Trapped in the Airport," is by Averill Curdy.
April 17, 2009
"The Pilot in the Jungle" is from The Collected Poems of John Ciardi by John Ciardi.
April 20, 2009
"Warbird" by Anna Leahy is featured in Constituents of Matter and Turns about a Point.
April 21, 2009
"The Eagle," is by Alfred, Lord Tennyson.
April 22, 2009
"Laika" is drawn from Esther Schor's second volume of poems, Protocol, which is nearing completion. The poem originally appeared in the Spring 2009 issue of The American Scholar.
April 23, 2009
"Voyage to the Moon," is from Collected Poems, 1917-1982 by Archibald MacLeish.
April 24, 2009
"A Leaf from a Log Book," originally appeared in Spanish Wings by H. Babcock.
April 27, 2009
"Sky Writers" appeared in With Wings as Eagles: Poems & Ballads of the Air.
April 28, 2009
"The Grave the Well" is from Old and New Poems by Donald Hall.
April 29, 2009
The excerpt from "Cape Hatteras" is from Complete Poems of Hart Crane, by Hart Crane.
April 30, 2009
"The Stars Don’t Dance" is by Anna Leahy is featured in Constituents of Matter, and Turns about a Point.
Comments (3)
I fell bereft with no more daily poetry! I enjoyed each and every one of the poems. Who knew there was such a vast collection of aviation poetry! Thank you.
Posted by Marlene on May 1,2008 | 12:15 PM
Where can I get to access the poems mentioned above ? Can't buy all the books, hence the question. EDITORS' REPLY: Type the poets' names into a search engine.
Posted by Ashok Rajadhyaksha - Mumbai (India) on May 28,2009 | 02:36 AM
my daughter has a project on space travel and this web site helped her a lot. thank you so much!!! :)
Posted by kathy on April 21,2011 | 02:05 PM