AIR-FORTRESS
By:
June 30, 2026
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.
Craven raven,
Brother of a gulley,
Carbolic grime,
A hole of ulcers in the chest
Blue skies!
A mountain’s smoking on antlers.
This is “CHRM”
Dark-winged oil-writhings,
A plaguing
Teethclanking people-chomper!
He’s roaring
In a herd of regiments
That slice the cranium of the sky, that honed stronghold,
With an engine.
It’s an armored fortress
An excavator of crowds.
The Air-Strike!
Eight o’clock sharp, and the hand at 8 —
From behind a cloud-cornice
It sighs and dumps
Epilepsy, lucite,
Spasms of gas, a burning St. Vitus’ dance
And 10,000 kilos of craziness.
But below
At the very same moment,
A drumroll…
Running…
A rapidspatter…
Revelry… a scary roar…
Ghouls began bounding out of basements dancing:
— Hey, stiffs, daredevils,
Come on into the street!
We’ll start the Belly-Up Jump;
Spinning with a funeral touch
Ghost-somersaults are in the propellors:
— Farewell, be-lube-ed Moscow!
A hot-shot paler than a hungry fish
Is sniffing at his wristwatch
Under the wheel
And – oops!s he’s swallowed it! …
Hey, man, the Nepman’s gnawed on the banknotes:
— I’ll give a pood! A promissory note! An IOU!… Cloth!… —
W-w-wailing are the stacks…
Explosions of lungs…
Red Square’s started howling and rolling
In spasms of laughter:
— Zakhukhukhugu!
He died!
He die-ed…
Ha-ha-ha! Hi there, umbilicus…
— Excerpt. I’ve left out an introductory excerpt from a speech by Soviet politician Nikolai Bukharin about American and European war planes and bacteria bombs. But that’s what this poem appears to be about.
Kruchenykh published “Air Fortress” (Aero-krepost), a provocative anti-war poem that blends the Russian Futurist’s signature zaum (transrational) language with harsh, real-world political rhetoric, in the fourth issue of the journal LEF in 1923. This was the Left Front of the Arts journal edited by Vladimir Mayakovsky. PS: LEF was the only journal to publish Kruchenykh’s poems.
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.