This fourth instalment from On the Phantom Air Ship Mystery presents the opening cantos from the central section, focussed on the events of April 1897.
Orthoteny: from a work in progress: from On the Phantom Air Ship Mystery: April 1, 2, 9, and 11
Notes towards tha myth of things seen in the sky
Skunkworks 
Bryan, thank you for these on-going literary posts about the Phantom Air Ship Mystery, one of my all-time favorite UFO topics, combining flim-flam newspaper competition for most bizarre stories, while many well-meaning apparently people did make reports of strange things seen in the sky, leaving in the end no way of arriving at a firm conclusion about what it was all about. Does sound familiar!
Michael Zimmerman
LikeLike
Glad you’re taking some pleasure in these, and thanks for saying so!
LikeLike
The first hit when Googling Orthoteny is a University of Cambridge page which reprints “Donald H. Menzel, “Orthoteny – a lost cause: Part 2” [abridged] Flying Saucer Review, July/August 1965, pp. 26–28.” Dr. Menzel’s math is very dense. I much prefer your take on the subject, Brian. (And Aimé Michel’s prose is far superior to the Harvard guy’s.)
LikeLike
Michel’s concept makes a nice working title for the project, both for its recherché ufological allusiveness and for its very idea, that sightings are connected, which nods to a formal structure in the poem, all those echoes (or “rimes” as some of us poets like to call them), in shape, appearance, circumstance, debunking, and other consistencies (coming up: crashes and cattle mutilations!).
Glad you take some pleasure in this work, and your saying so is much appreciated.
LikeLiked by 1 person