THE TELEPHONE
By:
October 5, 2024
A series dedicated to poems, published c. 1900–1935, the Radium Age sf-adjacent themes of which include: dystopia and utopia, far-out mathematics and the fourth dimension, Afro-futurism, catastrophe, future war, new technologies, scientific breakthrough, dehumanization, cosmic awe, disenchantment and unseen forces, unknowable aliens and singularity. Research and selection by Joshua Glenn; thematic index here.
Your voice, beloved, on the living wire,
Borne to me by the spirit powerful
Who binds the atoms and leaps out to pull
Great suns together! Ah, what magic lyre,
Strung for God’s fingers, sounds to my
desire
The little words immortal, wonderful,
That all the separating miles annul
And touch my spirit with your kiss of fire!
What house of dreams do we inhabit
— yea,
What brave enchanted palace is our home,
Green-curtained, lit with cresset stars
aglow,
If thus it windows gardens far away,
Groves inaccessible whence voices come
That soft in the ear call where we may not
go!
— From Monroe’s 1914 collection, You and I. However, the collection includes poems first published as early as 1905.
RADIUM AGE PROTO-SF POETRY: Stephen Spender’s THE PYLONS | George Sterling’s THE TESTIMONY OF THE SUNS | Archibald MacLeish’s EINSTEIN | Thomas Thornely’s THE ATOM | C.S. Lewis’s DYMER | Stephen Vincent Benét’s METROPOLITAN NIGHTMARE | Robert Frost’s FIRE AND ICE | Aldous Huxley’s FIFTH PHILOSOPHER’S SONG | Sara Teasdale’s “THERE WILL COME SOFT RAINS” | Edith Södergran’s ON FOOT I HAD TO… | Robert Graves’s WELSH INCIDENT | Nancy Cunard’s ZEPPELINS | D.H. Lawrence’s WELLSIAN FUTURES | & many more.