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THE TETRAHEDRAL KITES Collier Brown
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I. Alexander Graham Bell & the Preoccupation By noon, the winds fail. The lull the time. I'll say, I know exactly that is my shape, or my misuse or real. Dreams, you say. Yes, and strong.
When I dream of this, I'm not the age of yolk and shell. You said four sides meant an hour more for us? We could me, in a gift you gave to last
III. Alexander Graham Bell & His Circle My friends, watch this. I've taken all or in sleep, hours lost in nowheres, like the life I lead, and like the ones in emptiness, but dignified
IV. Alexander Graham Bell & the Paper Bird I'm no good at this. I understand the problem of the two not going a million nows, a million heres? together. If you're right, and we are,
V. Alexander Graham Bell & the Solution But that's the thing, you think you've got commitment to the work itself C. In all of the above, show love Someday, your kite will reach the air.
VI. Alexander Graham Bell & the Winged Boat After the experiments, the years all hours, dreaming of a cloud of stars, dead though they may be or blindly drift.
__ Alexander Graham Bell wasn't just interested in transmitting sound over the air. He dreamed of humans taking to the air too. Between 1903 and 1909, he designed and tested enormous kites, strengthened by grids of elegant tetrahedral (pyramid) cells. The journals he kept during this period are illustrated with photographs of Bell and his colleagues, sometimes assembling the kites, sometimes hoisting them upwards, sometimes bracing for disaster. The journals can be viewed on [the Library of Congress website]. The photographs inspired my sonnet sequence not because the famous telephone man features in them but because I feel the kite-maker's obsession in myself. We all experience some form of it: the impulse to button our coats, straighten our ties, and set about the doomed business of making something beautiful. I chose the sonnet to match that sentiment and wrote the lines in tetrameter in admiration of Bell's own tetrahedral arrangements. |