Preface
Acknowledgments
List of Illustrations
1. Introduction
2. Leonardo da Vinci and the Modern Century
The Annunciation, 17: The Necromancer, 24; Leda and the Swan, 33
3. Birds with a Human Face
The Envious Eye, 44; Our Business Is With Mechanism, 48; The Murder of Birds, 55
4. Wells and The War in the Air
5. Tumult in the Clouds: The Flying Machine and the Great Crusade
6. Lindbergh in 1927: The Response of Poets to the Poem of Fact
7. Origins: Some Versions of Kitty Hawk
Hart Crane's "Cape Hatteras," 110; Muriel Rukeyser's "Theory of Flight," 117; Language and Origins, 124
8. The Nearest Paradise: Forms of Flight in the 1930s
Redeeming the Time, 131; Saint-Exupery, 139; The Modern Bird Poem, 144
9. The Poetry of Firebombing
The Case of James Dickey, 152; The Modern Apocalypse, 162
10. Spaceflight: Three Versions of Manifest Destiny
Robert Frost's "Kitty Hawk" 172; Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow, 180; Robert A. Heinlein's The Man Who Sold the Moon, 185
11. The Moon Landing and Modern Literature
The Rivalry of Poet and Astronaut, 191; The Testimony of Mailer and Bellow, 203
12. Conclusion: Some Texts of the 1970s
The Descent, 212; The Ascent, 217
Notes
Supplementary Bibliography
Index
