Poem of the Week | October 13, 2014

This week we’re delighted to feature a poem by Emily Rosko. Rosko’s two poetry collections are Prop Rockery, awarded the 2011 Akron Poetry Prize, and Raw Goods Inventory, an Iowa Poetry Prize winner in 2005. She is editor of A Broken Thing: Poets on the Line (University of Iowa Press, 2011). Recent work has appeared or is forthcoming in Elsewheremag, New American Writing, Octopus Magazine, and Sycamore Review. She is assistant professor at the College of Charleston and poetry editor for Crazyhorse.
 
Author’s note:

Early balloonists were daredevils, romantics, striving to go beyond the human imagination with their application of science and invention into new technologies. The hot air balloon was the first to give humans the air—a new perspective of the earth, the access to test the qualities of atmosphere, and flight. These advances with the balloon were celebrated, marveled at, crowd-drawing spectacles that heightened people’s passions about what the human race could accomplish. There was an avidity of possibility. Even Benjamin Franklin upon hearing about the French balloonists’ accomplishments stated: “Someone asked me—what’s the use of a balloon? I replied—what’s the use of a new-born baby.” As with most wonderful technological advances, after the first successful manned balloon flight, many wanted to harness the balloon’s use for political reasons—namely war and espionage.
 
I’m indebted to Richard Holmes’s Falling Upwards: How We Took to the Air (Pantheon Books, 2013) for the information on the history of ballooning.