The Air Ship mystery (in a form for the culturally refined)

Copyright 2018, InterAmerica, Inc.

My pal, Bryan Sentes, a poet and philosophy maven, who teachers at Dawson College in Montreal (and shows up here now and then) sent me two “chapbooks” (he calls them) of his poetry.

One, pictured here, presents the Air Ship Mystery (and a few other things) celebrated in a poetic patina. (See scan, below).

Bryan wrote this answer to my query about his intention for the work: “The Phantom Air Ship poems is less making a myth than trying to reveal the myth that is already there …”

I find the poetic scrim quite effective as a literary device.

Moreover, I find the Air Ship mystery (and sightings) to be more than myth, and I think Bryan does too, deep down.

French UFO skeptic Gilles Fernandez finds the “Venus explanation” suitable to explain the late 19^th Century frenzy and Bryan places poetic snippets to that effect also, alongside the general assay that the sightings were journalistic concoctions by newspapers (and reporters) to sell their print product.

But there are believable things in the Airship reports, details that, if from reportorial imagination, are worthy to be called “truth” as Jacques Derrida might allow in his theory of the written word.

At any rate, the “chapbook” from Bryan is a treasure, and I thank him for letting me be privy to his work(s).

RR