THE NEW NEGRO
By:
April 25, 2025
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.
He scans the world with calm and fearless
eyes,
Conscious within of powers long since
forgot;
At every step, new man-made barriers rise
To bar his progress — but he heeds them
not.
He stands erect, though tempests round
him crash,
Though thunder bursts and billows surge
and roll;
He laughs and forges on, while lightnings
flash
Along the rocky pathway to his goal.
Impassive as a Sphinx, he stares ahead —
Foresees new empires rise and old ones
fall;
While caste-mad nations lust for blood to
shed,
He sees God’s finger writing on the wall.
With soul awakened, wise and strong he
stands,
Holding his destiny within his hands.
— Though McCall never published a collection of poems, this one was included in Caroling Dusk (1927), a seminal “Anthology of Verse by Negro Poets” edited by Countee Cullen.
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.