TENTACLE

By: Hirato Renkichi
October 15, 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.

     

In the sky
The tentacle
          Extends
The invisible hand
To an umbel
Sum total of sensation and memory and
          Awakening!
The tentacle           incessantly
Sails through time
Runs along the margins
Crashes into an unknown light
          Fractures
Fracture = = = = Union
Union = = = = Fracture
Birth and movement of a new sensation
Incessantly
          Blooms as an umbel
               Extending

— Found in Spiral Staircase, a posthumous (1931) collection of the author’s poems translated in 2017 by Sho Sugita. “Tentacle” is part of a larger work titled “Four-Dimensional Poem (Futurisme+Cubisme=Dadaisme=Expressionisme).”

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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.