The Poetics of Flight: Futurist "Aeropoesia"

In 1931, Marinetti published a Manifesto of Futurist Aeropoetry, in which he urged the Futurist poets to emulate the aeropainters. During the next thirteen years, he and his colleagues celebrated the advent of aviation in poem after poem, some of which were paired with Futurist paintings. Evoking the physical and psychological sensation of flying, Marinetti and his fellow poets described not only what they felt but also how it affected them. Attempting to describe what they saw from their aerial perspective, they indulged in verbal pyrotechnics and experimented with various visual effects.