Great Moments in Literature # 10

Poetry Gland

Belgrade, 29 April 1993: Professor Dagvan Petrolian, Chief Research Scientist at the Belgrade Neurolinguistic Institute, demonstrates the combined acoustic resonator and MRI scanner used in the search for the elusive ‘poetry gland’. Recordings of poetry being recited are played at high levels through the multiple loudspeaker units surrounding the rear of the head; meanwhile, a Magnetic Resonance Imaging detector monitors the faint neural activity that occurs below the hippocampus as a response to the aural stimulus. Past research has targeted this area of the brain as being implicated in poetic seizures. The so-called ‘poetry gland’ is clearly visible outlined in yellow in the scanner images below. It is planned to incorporate a small moustache trimmer in future models of the machine.

Jacket’s Great Moments in Literature —

Jacket # 3 — On 29 April 1943, researchers at the Cavendish Laboratory successfully test the technique of metamorphic diathermal annealing.

Jacket # 4 — Self-styled ‘Engineer Poet’ Dieter Baumbeiter reduces Heinrich von Kleist's twelve-volume Ode to Angst to the size of a haiku.

Jacket # 8 — Sappho Sees the Light — The young poetess Sappho of Lesbos, exasperated by her boy friend Tod's crude subaqueous advances, decides to look elsewhere for inspiration for her erotic verse.

Jacket # 9 — Hiram Bamburger's 1951 ‘Poetry Machine’ — photo of inventor Hiram Bamburger at the keyboard of his ‘Linopentametron’.

Jacket # 10 — Belgrade researchers pinpoint location of ‘Poetry Gland’ in brain.

Jacket # 11 — Hilbert Trogue's ‘Pants Poem’ a knockout in Peoria! First poetry reading in the casual ‘Modern Style’!