NORWAY
By:
March 5, 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.
Oh! This is Norway
soft as cotton,
land like a cookie
and ocean chewing its shores.
All morning I’ve been on the bridge
and the fish carts have gone by.
A small factory shot through with windows
flings out a red diabolo each minute
— streetcars.
Oh! This is Norway
possessed of metal trees
and young ladies brought up in
refrigerators.
Here a bird turns like a windmill
and the horses are tamer than in Holland.
The fjords rise like old theater curtains.
Every six months the sun goes down.
Fish-country on the North Pole’s gaff,
white bear with a blue eye: Spitzbergen.
Whooo,oo,oo,oo,oo!
All morning I was on the bridge
And the fish carts went by.
One of them dropped a dead codfish
and the streetcar guillotine sliced it in two.
Oh! This is Norway
green and white,
white and green like an obscene old man.
— Written 1929, when the poet was 15. Part of a series titled Poems by a Young Man who Has Never Traveled. Translated from the Spanish by Chris Brandt and Yolanda Blanco.
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.