NO CREDIT

By: Kenneth Fearing
July 24, 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.

Whether dinner was pleasant, with the
     windows lit by gunfire, and no one
     disagreed; or whether, later, we argued
     in the park, and there was a touch of
     vomit-gas in the evening air;
  whether we found a greater, deeper,
     more perfect love, by courtesy of
     Camels, over NBC; whether the comics
     amused us, or the newspapers carried a
     hunger death, and published a
     whitehouse prayer for mother’s day;
  whether the bills were paid or not,
     whether or not we had our doubts,
     whether we spoke our minds at Joe’s,
     and the receipt said “Not Redeemable,”
     and the cash register rang up “No Sale,”
  whether the truth was then, or later, or
     whether the best had already gone —
Nevertheless, we know; as every turn is
     measured; as every unavoidable risk is
     known;
  as nevertheless, the flesh grows old, dies,
     dies in its only life, is gone;
  the reflection goes from the mirror; as the
     shadow, of even a Communist, is gone
     from the wall;
  as nevertheless, the current is thrown and
     the wheels revolve; and nevertheless, as
     the word is spoken and the wheat grows
     tall and the ships sail on —
None but the fool is paid in full; none but
     the broker, none but the scab is certain
     of profit;
  the sheriff alone may attend a third
     degree in formal attire; alone, the
     academy artists multiply in dignity as a
     trooper’s bayonet guards the door;
  only Steve, the side-show robot, knows
     content; only Steve, the mechanical man
     in love with a photo-electric beam,
     remains aloof; only Steve, who sits and
     smokes or stands in salute, is secure;
Steve, whose shoebutton eyes are blind to
     terror, whose painted ears are deaf to
     appeal, whose welded breast will never
     be slashed by bullets, whose armature
     soul can hold no fear.

— Found in Fearing’s 1935 collection Poems. “No Credit” was first published in the September-October 1934 issue of the Partisan Review.

In Mark Steven’s Red Modernism (2017), we read that Kenneth Fearing was one of the few poets of the era who wrote about “the violent antagonism with which communism and communists were met when capital retaliated against labor.” This poem, which has been described as “Marxist noir,” correlates communist commitment with mortal imperilment.

In Steven’s reading of this poem:

The repeated word “nevertheless” maintains the fatalism that introduces each of these four overlapping vignettes. Taken as a whole, these lines depict the experience of capitalism in 1930s America. From the perspective of labor, “every turn is measured” and “every unavoidable risk is known,” and there is no alternative to the economically circumscribed cycle of exploitation, depredation, and death. It is a situation from which the spectral figure of the communist — here, a proper noun — has abruptly and mysteriously “gone,” as though to emphasize the structural foreclosure of anything antithetical to the iron law of the market. In the absence of communism, capital continues to produce and circulate its commodities: “the wheat grows tall and the ships sail on.” These are granted more vitality than the dying flesh that surrounds them, whose subsistence (“only life”) has been relegated to a mere supporting role for the market. The technological metaphor, “the current is thrown,” not only gives expression to the mechanized sphere of production and circulation but also conjures up a specific event in the cultural history of the Popular Front that feeds into the already chilling intensity of these lines. It is, of course, an allusion to Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, two left-wing radicals who were unjustly executed in 1927, despite mass protests led by communists.

PS: Fearing’s 1942 pulp novel Clark Gifford’s Body, which gravely and literately portrays a near-future US civil war, is science fiction.

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NO CREDIT

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