“FROM ANY EVENT INTERVALS…”

By: Kenneth Rexroth
May 4, 2025

A (pro- or anti-) science-, mathematics-, technology-, space-, apocalypse-, dehumanization-, disenchantment-, and/or future-oriented poem published during sf’s emergent Radium Age (c. 1900–1935). Research and selection by Joshua Glenn.

FUNDAMENTAL DISAGREEMENT WITH TWO CONTEMPORARIES

for Tristan Tzara and André Breton

1

“From any event intervals radiate in all directions to other events, and the real and imaginary intervals are separated by a cone which is called the null-cone.”

                  gonaV
    ;
ing       evIT
    dras             PROG
        2m3nL½
      pros
    *proS
instoting
tismaD
PROXY
gela
      domi
            immoderate
PROSPECT
savours curve doing instant conceptual
     bipartite
              engine
West inclination 32
PERSPECTIVE
engine
ENGINE
MACHINE
CONCEPTUAL PERSPECTIVE ENGINE
  x  y  z
motor-organ-organ-motor-…………………….ds!
number here
√2     to the left     to the right
distribute
origin of vector
description of vectors
the personal pronoun
vvvvvvvvvvvv
  vvvvvvvvvv
    vvvvvvvv

i.
modulatepersistendurereverserevolvereciprocate-
    oscillateperpetuate
            ARRIVE
or pressure of significance
there exists an a
there exists an i
there exists at least one other entity b
valid
efficient
potent
which vests the prospect with originative
     continuity
the dominative pervasive accommodation
     of aspect
as the insertion localized as integer
     formalizer
thus acquiring trajectory
thus assimilating contingency
or the contingent as hiatus in the populous
meaning fused with recipient
amplitude coexists with discretion
importance endures with intervals
concentric and unique
not pendant
as an exterior
without contour
without projective meaning
shift digit
for this the fundamental number
of momentum
of retrograde traction
or of ingress
incarnate
tenuous
fluent
for this ophidian throat
twilight under the eucalyptus
stones sabers clouds kings nights leaves
     wishes arbors sparks
    shells wings mouths stars oranges
     fabrics ewes queens skins
    vehicles accents seeds cinders chutneys
     mixtures fevers apes
    eggs corpses mosses boxes shades irons
     glaciers
go up as if to be in or on
contemplate acumen distinguished as a
     formation
or the inane as mother of density
where the embassy of acquisition scrutinizes the monitor
or the spoon out of the sessile rainbow
     slides to the left of the
    mountains we are so prone to leave out
     of our calculations

— Excerpt from Rexroth’s “Fundamental Disagreement with Two Contemporaries,” written in the 1920s. Collected in The Art of Worldly Wisdom (1949) under the section heading “Interoffice Communications.”

Regarding the title of this poem, which refers to the dadaists/surrealists Tristan Tzara and André Breton, Rexroth claims that the first part of this poem (excerpted here) is a parody of Tzara, and the second a parody of Breton. Rexroth’s beef with surrealist and dada poetry has to do (he says in the same interview) with what he perceives as these writers’ “confusion” of poetic and religious experience. The former, Rexroth insists, is an experience of maximum specificity, while the latter is an unqualified experience.

***

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.