Stop the History Book Presses! Beat Poet Made it to Space First

Far out! Sinclair Beiles, a Parisian beatnik, is revealed as being the original space case poet. A new exhibition at MIT displays Greek artist Vassilakis Takis's electromagnetic sculptures that employ a similar scientific procedure that made Beiles float in space while reciting poems (before any astronaut had the chance to). Forbes explains:

...Takis coaxed [Beiles] to strap on a helmet and hover for several minutes, suspended electromagnetically, while reciting poetry. Beiles made his voyage in the Fall of 1960, and although he later said that the magnetism scrambled his brain, Takis proudly asserted that his expedition anticipated Yuri Gagarin’s space launch by six months. Takis was soon recruited to work at MIT.

Space-y poets everywhere accept being called a "space cadet" with pride. More:

With his electromagnetic sculptures, Takis made palpable an otherwise invisible force. In this he was not the first. (The great experimental physicist Michael Faraday had him beat by more than a century.) However, as MIT art historian Wayne Andersen once wrote, Takis’ sculptures bridged “the objective exposition of a force and its relation to the human condition”. As an artist, he was free to take physical phenomena into a realm beyond the scope of physics. His sculptures simultaneously demonstrate electromagnetism and capture the wonder of it.

Poetry: the final frontier. Get your head in the clouds.